


The Otherworldly Traveler

by miserymire



Category: The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Enemies to Friends, F/M, POV Third Person Limited, Slow Burn, Technology
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-22
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2019-07-15 11:29:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 34
Words: 150,457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16062191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miserymire/pseuds/miserymire
Summary: 2119 has it all—robots, teleporters, colonies on Mars—and Vanna Meadows has the chance to escape it by testing out a new time traveling device called NEVA. A malfunction leaves her in an unfamiliar, dangerous land, and the imp that trapped her there in the first place gives her an ultimatum: she must help the imp and a goatherd-turned-hero on their quest to retrieve ancient artifacts, or NEVA will never be restored and she’ll be trapped forever.





	1. NEVA

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is an alternate version of a story that I'd previously only been posting on FFN. I was curious what it would read like in third person instead of first person, and after editing the first chapter just to see, I decided that I really liked it and I wanted to see the whole story in third person. However, I wasn’t about to go changing perspective suddenly on my readers on FFN 23 chapters in, so here we are on AO3.

"I know how kids these days are, Vanna. You think that just because we don't have information streamed into our brains and completely sentient robots yet that technology isn't that great, but it is. If it weren't for technology, you wouldn't even be hearing what I'm saying right now!"

"I guess I'm not a kid from these days then, because I couldn't care less about if robots have real feelings or not, and I think the technology we have now is great. Don't act like hearing aids are anywhere near comparable to _this_. Even just the idea is outrageous."

"And hundreds of years ago, the idea of the deaf being able to hear using tiny devices in their ears was outrageous."

Vanna let out a resigned sigh, and she continued to follow Mr. Rider down one of the pristine halls of Ridertech in silence. She loved Mr. Rider, and she thought he was an absolute genius. He was renowned around the world for his Synthumans and TPorts, the best robots and teleportation devices on the market, but too often he let that get to his head. It made him think he was capable of making anything. That ' _anything_ ' included NEVA, a TPort with the added ability to travel through time. Today, Vanna's job was to test it, and she was not exactly pleased.

Mr. Rider came to a stop in front of a metal door with _TESTING – 47_ engraved on a plaque above it, several seconds before Vanna's much shorter legs were able to catch up. He pressed his finger on the scanner next to the door, and the scanner flashed green before the door zipped up into the wall. Mr. Rider strode into the room ahead of her, going straight to a desk with a black device on it. She took one step inside. The door closed so fast behind her that red strands of her long hair blew forward. Everything suddenly felt all too real—she was in the testing room, NEVA was in Mr. Rider's hand, and the moment she had been dreading was staring her right in the face.

She slowly walked to Mr. Rider. He turned toward her, proudly displaying NEVA. "Here it is!" he said, in the cheery voice he had reserved for when he would show off his new gadgets and creations.

Vanna grimaced as she stared at NEVA where it sat on Mr. Rider's hand. The black armband had a green backlit screen over the wrist and a virtual keyboard across the midsection. It didn't look too different from her own TPort, which was one of the older models.

"...I was expecting something a bit more complex-looking," she said after a few moments. "It looks so simplistic."

"It's a feature," he said, making her roll her eyes. "Besides, you know the complex stuff is what's inside of them, not outside. All teleporters look simplistic now."

"The first commercial teleporter came out, what, in the eighties? It's 2119, of course they'd be simplistic by now. NEVA should look at least _a little_ more clunky and awkward like the first makes of teleporters were."

"NEVA _is_ a teleporter," Mr. Rider said. Vanna opened her mouth, but before she could get anything out, he went on speaking. "It's a heavily upgraded one, but one nonetheless, and I've been working on it since before you were created!" Her nose scrunched up at the way he decided to word that. "Er, born. Sorry. So, I always tried to keep NEVA looking just as sleek as any other TPort while making it. Zi actually helped me with that. I thought it'd be best to have a young person help, since they know all about what people think looks good. And speaking of Zi, I turned down his request to be the first person to try NEVA. I didn't even ask your mother if she wanted to try it yet. You should feel honored that I'm giving you the chance to be _the first person who ever time travels_."

She narrowed her eyes at him. Zi was his son and protégé, and Vanna's mother, Daina, had been working as a beta tester for Mr. Rider for over twenty years. If she were him, those were the two that she would have trusted the most to be testing out NEVA. She knew very well that Mr. Rider loved her like she was the daughter he never had—if only because her late father, Lee, had been his closest friend since they were kids—but there was a part of her that felt like he wanted her to be the one to test out NEVA because she was more replaceable than Zi or her mom.

"You know there's a chance that thing could be deadly," she said in a flat tone.

"If I thought there was a chance that NEVA could kill, I wouldn't be letting _anybody_ try it out, especially not a child—"

"I'm seventeen."

"—and especially not _you_ ," he said, ignoring her interruption. "You're my son's best friend—and to be honest with you, a lot of the time, I like you more than him."

Mr. Rider laughed briefly at himself, and Vanna couldn't help but crack the tiniest grin. She always enjoyed making jokes with him at the expense of his lovable but mischievous son, and the flattery did admittedly help calm her fear that he saw her as replaceable. Still, her fear of using NEVA lingered.

"Listen, Vanna, if you don't want to try it out, that's fine. It was just an offer. There are a lot of other up-and-coming projects you can beta test for me. I just thought you'd be interested in getting to test out something where you can finally have the freedom your mom doesn't let you have."

Out of all of the things he had said to try to convince her that trying out NEVA was an incredible opportunity, that was by far the one that resonated with her the most. Her mom had always been extremely overprotective, especially so after Vanna's dad died unexpectedly in a spacebus crash while on a business trip to Mars three years back. The only time she was allowed out of her mom's sight was when she was at school, with one of the Rider's, or with her two older half-sisters, Kalina and Jaylene.

This was her chance to get away. And if she came back unscathed, then she would have all the proof she needed to show her mom that she was capable of surviving without supervision.

"I can see that made you rethink this, huh?" Mr. Rider said with a smile.

Vanna smiled back. "That sounds nice. But..."

"But you're still scared," he finished for her. She nodded. "Well, I don't think you've got any reason to be. You've got your own gun for this, and you've learned how to use it, but you know that if anything happens to you while you're gone, we'll fix you right up when you get back."

' _We_ ,' of course, meant his wife, Mrs. Rider, or as she modestly refused to be called, Dr. Rider. Mr. Rider was technically a doctor as well, in that he had received a doctorate in engineering, but his wife was a pediatrician. Vanna agreed with Mr. Rider that she could help her no matter what, but what he said only proved to worry her further. She was so worried that her time traveling would potentially affect the entire universe that she hadn't even thought about what physical damage could be done to her if she _didn't_ rip the universe to shreds.

Mr. Rider sat NEVA back down on the desk next to its instruction manual. "Like I said: if you don't want to try it out, that's fine. It's all up to you."

She pursed her lips as she looked down at it. Mr. Rider said he didn't believe it could kill her, and she trusted him, so that wasn't an issue to her any longer, but there were so many other things she knew could go wrong with it. What if she got stuck in the future and couldn't come back? What if she got stuck in the past, or did something there that completely changed the course of history? What if she messed something up so majorly that she created a paradox and made the universe cease to exist?

But what if it _did_ work? What if she _was_ the first person to ever time travel? What if she could finally, _finally_ have the freedom she'd been yearning for?

Vanna was drawn out of her thoughts by the view of Mr. Rider looking down at the screen on his TPort from her peripheral. He typed in something, then dropped his arm and looked back to her.

"I'm needed in another part of the factory," he said. "You can have some alone time to try to make up your mind. If you do decide to try out NEVA, read the instructions I left on the desk first, all right? If you decide not to try it, then feel free to leave. Zi said he wanted to see you today, so you can teleport to our house if you want to. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Vanna barely got the chance to say "Okay" before he was out of the room. As the door shut behind him, she looked at the desk. Her eyes scanned the piece of paper with NEVA's instructions on it. It didn't seem too complicated to use; the only way it differed from other TPorts was the time travel command. Written below the instructions was a warning, urging the user to avoid messing with events in the past for fear of paradoxes. That had been obvious to Vanna, but seeing it written on paper made her even more scared of the possibility of it happening.

She decided to just go to the future instead. Though she told herself there couldn't be any paradoxes then because of the future not even happening yet, her hand was still shaking as she picked up NEVA and put it on her right arm. She toyed around with the idea of taking off the TPort on her left arm, admittedly just to procrastinate using NEVA, and she ultimately decided to take it off in case NEVA would mess with it in some way. Vanna closed her eyes—like you were supposed to before teleporting, as the sudden change in scenery was known to be migraine-inducing—and tried to mentally prepare herself for what she was about to say.

"NEVA, activate," she said. "Time travel: September 1st, 2319."

She heard crackling noises coming from NEVA, prompting her to open her eyes and look down. She was still in the same room, and NEVA was starting to spark. Vanna hurried to take it off, but before she could, the sparks started to fly wildly and a shock coursed through her body, rendering her unable to move. She couldn't even yell for help or open her eyes that had squeezed shut from the pain.

If NEVA didn't kill her first, Vanna was going to kill Mr. Rider.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Rider - Vanna - Zi


	2. Link

Suddenly, the electricity stopped coursing through Vanna. She fell to her knees, let out the breath she had been involuntarily holding in, and took NEVA off before it could have the chance to shock her again. She opened her teary eyes to inspect her burning arm. If she hadn't already fallen to the ground, she definitely would have just then. She was in a small clearing in the middle of a _forest_.

There were two sunken lanes, one to her left and one straight ahead of her, and to her right was a tree house. She was bewildered, to say the least. How, in the course of two hundred years, did the bustling industrial city she was raised in become a forest? Vanna knew people were obsessed with ' _saving the planet_ ' enough to plant trees in every piece of unoccupied land there was, but tearing down _an entire city_ just to make a forest was such an absurd thought that she didn't even consider it for more than a few seconds.

There had to be some other explanation. Maybe NEVA had put her in a completely random place because she hadn't specified where she wanted to go. She made a mental note to tell Mr. Rider to fix that whenever she went back. Until then, she wanted to find out where exactly NEVA had put her, and the only way to do that was to find someone in the area to tell her.

She got off the ground and wiped the dirt off her legs. She decided to go see if someone was in the tree house first, as it was closest to her. Leaving NEVA on the ground—she didn't want to touch that thing for a while in fear of it shocking her again—Vanna climbed up the ladder to the tree house. She knocked on the door, and her heart raced in anticipation. That anticipation gradually faded away as thirty seconds passed with no sign of someone coming to the door. She knocked again, and after another thirty seconds passed, she decided to peek in.

Vanna opened the door as quietly as she could and poked her head in. Nobody was inside, so she let herself the rest of the way in, not fully closing the door behind her. It was a nice little tree house, but it looked so ... old-fashioned. There wasn't a single technological device to be seen. Thinking that the house had to be owned by some dirty old tree-hugger, she decided to go down one of the paths to see if anyone else lived nearby. Just as she got back to the door, it started to open wider. She gasped at the same time as the person who opened the door did.

"I'm not a robber, I swear!" Vanna immediately yelled, throwing her hands up.

He said nothing at first, simply staring her up and down, and Vanna took the time to do the same of him. Surprisingly, he didn't look like a dirty old tree-hugger. His strange and slightly familiar green getup that included a sword on his back definitely looked old-fashioned, but he seemed to be about her age. She thought he was actually quite good looking. He had striking blue eyes and dirty blond hair that was almost light brown. Vanna briefly wondered if the average height had gone down drastically over the last two hundred years, because she was probably only an inch shorter than the slim boy, and she was short for a girl in the 2100s. She noticed that he was holding NEVA in one of his gloved hands. When she looked back up to his face, his cheeks were red.

"Who are you, and why are you in my house?" he finally asked.

"Oh, you're Southern," she said. Vanna had never been out of the Mid-Atlantic, and barely ever out of New Jersey, so she was taken aback to realize she was so far from home. "Uh, my name's Vanna. I'm ... a very long way from home. I came in here to find someone to tell me where exactly I'm at, because I have no idea. I promise you, I wasn't in here to rob you or anything like that. If you just tell me where I am, I'll be on my way."

"Ordon."

"Ordon?" she repeated. "I'm guessing it's someplace in the South, huh?"

He nodded. "Only village down here in Ordona Province..."

Vanna was baffled for a second because of his claim that they were in a province—what had happened to the states? Were they even in America at all?—but she was quickly distracted when she realized that he had on pointed ears, and it clicked why his outfit was familiar. "Why are you cosplaying as Zelda? That's _classic_. Was there some kind of reprisal between the 2100s and now?"

His eyebrows drew together in confusion. "What? What are you talking about?"

She mirrored his confused look. "You're cosplaying as Zelda."

"What's ' _cosplaying_ ' _?_ "

"Oh, is there a new word for cosplaying?" she asked. "Sorry, uh, I'm not exactly up-to-date with the newest terms. I just mean that you're dressing up as Zelda."

He looked even more confused at that. "I ain't dressin' up as Zelda," he said, looking down at his clothes. "I was given—"

"Link!" she suddenly exclaimed, making his head snap back up. "His name is Link, not Zelda. Zelda's the princess, right? I was never into old games, and you know Zelda games are some of the oldest of old games. Sorry. What were you gonna say?"

He stared at her for a few seconds before speaking. "I was gonna say that I was given this outfit and told that it belonged to some ancient hero, but... What do you mean ' _his name is Link_ ' and what are ' _Zelda games_ ' supposed to be?"

"Link was the hero in the Zelda games, so whoever gave you that outfit was talking about him. Zelda games are so ancient at this point that they're not widely known, I'm guessing, but they used to be really popular in the late 1900s and early 2000s."

"Okay," he said slowly, "and what exactly do you mean by ' _games_ ' _?_ "

"Oh, come on," Vanna said, putting her hand on her hip. "There's no way that video games have fallen out in the 2300s."

"Why are you talking about the 1900s and 2000s and 2100s and 2300s?" he said. "It's 1598. Are you okay?"

Vanna's eyes widened. "It's _1598?_ " she said in disbelief.

Once he nodded, she snatched NEVA out of his hands and looked at its screen. Sure enough, it said that the date was September 1st, 1598.

Surprised as she was, it made a lot of sense. NEVA must have taken her back about 500 years instead of forward 200 like she had told it to. It explained why the boy didn't know about cosplaying or video games or Zelda, and why his house was so old-fashioned and barren of technology.

But then, she realized, her explanation of someone giving him the Link outfit made no sense. Link wasn't an ancient hero in the 1500s. How would someone from this time have known about the hero of a video game hundreds of years before video games were invented?

"...Is that thing yours?" the boy asked, pulling Vanna out of her thoughts. "I found it on the ground outside."

"Yeah, it's mine, I left it there," she said. "Who gave you that outfit?"

"I could ask the same of you," he said, quickly glancing back down at her clothes.

She supposed it being the 1500s also explained why he had blushed when he saw what she was wearing. Bodysuits and crop tops definitely weren't in in the past.

"I know nobody dresses like this normally, whatever," she said. "Seriously, who gave you that outfit?"

"It ... wasn't exactly a person. It was a Light Spirit."

"A Light Spirit?"

"You really haven't heard of them?" he asked. "The Light Spirits each protect a province at the order of the Goddesses. The one who watches over Faron Province gave me this tunic."

Every word he said was just making Vanna more and more confused. "What Goddesses? I thought everyone here believed in Jesus or whatever in the 1500s."

"The Golden Goddesses...? Din, Nayru, Farore...? Y'know, the ones who created this green Earth and everythin' on it?"

It took her a second to realize what he meant, and when she did, she crossed her arms. "Yeah, I've heard about the Golden Goddesses. I never liked history or Zelda games in particular, but I do like games, and I know that people in 1598 didn't believe in the Golden Goddesses, because the Golden Goddesses weren't thought up until the _1990s_. You can't—you don't really think I believe that I'm actually in, what's it called, _Hyrule?_ "

"Ordon's not really a part of it, so you're not actually in Hyrule, but—"

"But you really want me to believe that Hyrule is _real?_ " she interjected.

He looked at her like she was insane. "Why would you believe that Hyrule _isn't_ real?"

"Because Hyrule _isn't_ real!" she said. "This—oh, god dammit, I know what this is! Ugh! Zi and his dad are pranking me! This is some VR game, isn't it?! That's what NEVA is!"

"What's—?"

"Oh, shut up, _Link_ ," she said. She squeezed her eyes shut. "You're not real. You're a made-up character in a virtual reality game, and I'm not even actually talking to you right now."

"She's _insane_ ," whispered a high-pitched voice in a sing-song tone.

Vanna opened her eyes, and nearly stumbled back when she saw a small shadowy creature floating in the air next to Link. The creature dove down to the ground quickly, merging with the boy's shadow.

"Sorry 'bout her," Link said.

"I'm not sorry," said the girl from where she still hid in his shadow. "Seriously, Link. Just leave. We have stuff to do, and crazy girl here is only holding us back."

"She's not crazy. She's confused," he responded. "Vanna, how did you get here?"

Vanna took in a deep breath. "I was given NEVA, a time traveling device, and I told it to take me from 2119, where I was, to 2319. It freaked out and sparks started flying from it and when I opened my eyes, I was outside of your house."

"So, it accidentally took you to the past instead of to the future, then," he said.

"This isn't the past, this is another _world_. One that's _fake."_

"How could this world possibly be fake?" Link asked. "You've seen it with your own eyes."

"Because _Hyrule isn't real!_ " she said in frustration. "Hyrule is a made-up, fictional place, and you are a made-up, fictional character. You don't exist in reality. This is all virtual. I'm actually standing in one of the rooms of the factory right now, but I'm here in my head, thanks to NEVA."

The shadow girl let out a groan, and came out of Link's shadow again. "So, you think that that oversized bracelet is making you hallucinate that you're in a fake world?"

"Pretty much, yeah," Vanna said.

She held her small hands up in front of her chest, conjured a ball of what looked like orange electricity out of nowhere, and then flung it toward NEVA. NEVA was instantly reduced to nothing but ash, and it slipped through Vanna's fingers to the wooden floor.

"There," the shadow girl said. "If that was making you hallucinate, you wouldn't be here anymore. This world is real even if it might be fictional where you come from, and you really are here, so you can stop making up excuses because you don't want to believe it."

Vanna looked down at the ashes at her feet. Tears started to well up in her eyes and her heart started to beat wildly. "Why did you do that?!" she shouted. "That was my only way to get home! I'll be stuck here forever now!"

"...Oops?"


	3. Deal

"Oops? _Oops?!_ " Vanna yelled. "You just—you _ruined my life!_ "  
  
"If I hadn't done it, you'd still be yapping on about how you're in a fake world," the shadow girl said with a shrug.

Vanna had half a mind to reach over and strangle her. What kind of sick bastard could shrug off the fact that they ruined someone's life?! "If you hadn't done it, I could have just told it to take me back home and _it would have_ , you piece of shit!"

"Midna, the least you could do is apologize..." Link gently said.

She crossed her arms. "I'm not apologizing. If she's stuck here forever, that's her own problem, not mine."

"You caused the problem!" Vanna yelled, feeling like she could pass out from fury.

Midna yawned. "You said that if Link told you where you were, you would be on your way. He told you you're in Ordon already, so..."

"That was _before_ you decided to be an asshole and break my belongings!"

"Is there anything you can do to bring it back?" Link asked Midna.

"It's thousands of ashes on the ground, now," Midna said. "What do you think I'd be able to do about it?"

"If you have the power to just zap it into ashes, you have the power to zap it back!" Vanna said.

"No, I don't. I'm not as powerful as I w—... I'm not that powerful, okay? So you're just gonna have to get used to this world. And you're going to be getting used to it while Link and I leave, like we were going to do before you interrupted everything." Midna went back down into Link's shadow.

Link sighed. "Vanna, I'm really sorry for what she did, and for how she's acting about it, but I have to go, now. You can go down to the village. Just take the path right across from my house. The mayor's house is the very last one to the left. He's got himself holed up in there right now, but I'm sure he'd come out for someone who needs help."

Vanna was still fuming, but she tried her hardest to keep herself calm. Link didn't deserve to bear the brunt of her anger when he'd done nothing to her. "And what's down the path to the side?"

"If you go down it a bit, you'll get to the Spirit's Spring, but don't go any farther than that. It's not safe out there." He turned to his door and opened it, then looked back at her. "I doubt it, but if no one in the village is willing to take you in for a while as you're adjusting to being here, you can stay in my house. I'll probably be busy for some time. Won't be needing my house much."

He walked outside and Vanna followed after him, closing the door behind her. One after the other, they climbed down the ladder.

"You really trust me?" Vanna asked.

Link stared into her eyes for a few seconds. "Yeah."

She'd just told herself in her head that Link didn't deserve to be treated badly, but she already ran out of the willpower to not unleash her sour mood on him. "You should let me speak with your parents so I can tell them about how you're trusting a stranger you've known for all of five minutes to stay in your house. I bet they'd be _really_ proud."

"They're dead," he said stiffly.

Vanna raised her eyebrows. "Oh... Sorry. I didn't know."

"It's fine. Goodbye."

With that, he walked away, down the path leading away from the village. Vanna wanted to yell after him and ask him why he was going down the dangerous path, and tell him that she really was sorry and that her dad was dead, too, so she knew how he felt, but thinking of her dad made her freeze up. She realized that it didn't matter if her dad was dead, because even if he was alive, she would never get the chance to see him again. She was never going to see anybody from home ever again.

The reality of the situation hit her like a ton of bricks. Her lingering anger at Midna faded into anguish. She collapsed to the ground and backed herself up against Link's tree house, and she drew her knees up and buried her head between them as she cried.

She would never again cry on her mother's shoulder. She would never get to see Kalina and Ami get married next May. She would never get to meet Jaylene's son due to be born next month. She would never again feel the warm embrace of Zi. There were so many things she would never get the chance to do again.

She regretted listening to Mr. Rider more than she had ever regretted anything she'd done before. She _knew_ she should have trusted her gut and not gone through with it. She _knew_ something bad would happen, but she was so swayed by the idea of finally earning her freedom, and now she would have to pay the price. Vanna finally had the freedom she thought she wanted, at the expense of losing everything and everyone she'd ever loved.

Her mind couldn't stop racing over what her family and friends would be thinking, feeling, doing. She wanted so badly to tell them that she was alive and well, not dead like they would most likely presume her to be. Vanna could see her mom and her sisters mourning in a funeral home with no casket, Mr. Rider attending and feeling guilt for her disappearance, Zi grieving the loss of his best friend. Her dog would wait endlessly for her to return home, but she never would. Ridiculous as it may sound, that last one made her cry even harder. At least her family and friends had the capacity to _understand_. Her dog would never know.

"You all right there, lass?"

Vanna quickly looked up at the sound of the voice. An older, potbellied man with a mustache that strangely looked like tusks was walking toward her. She wiped her eyes and got to her feet.

"...That was a dumb question," he said. "What's got you down?"

It was hard for her to say it, but she responded, "I can't get home."

"Where're you from? As the mayor of this village, I'm required to know the lands surrounding it. I'm sure I could help you find a way home."

"No," she said. "No, you can't. You have no idea..."

"Oh, I'm sure you can get back home. Where are you from? Castle Town? Kakariko Village?"

"I'm not from Hyrule. I'm not from this _world_ but I'm stuck here and there's no way to get back to mine," she said, realizing afterward that she was much too harsh on the kind man who was only trying to help her.

He was silent for a few moments. "Um... Pray tell, how, exactly, did someone from another ' _world_ ' get here?"

"It doesn't matter. The thing I used to get here was destroyed and it can't be brought back, so..." Vanna paused.

When Link asked if Midna could bring back NEVA, she was about to say that she wasn't as powerful as she _was_ before she cut herself off—meaning that there was a time when she was powerful enough to bring back NEVA. If she got her powers back...

Midna was Vanna's only chance at getting NEVA back so she could go home.

"Thanks for trying to help!" she yelled as she bolted off down the path Link had gone down.

Vanna ran right past the Spirit's Spring that Link had warned her not to go past, and kept on going over a bridge. She passed by what looked like another Spirit's Spring and went into a short, curvy tunnel. There was a fork in the path just beyond it; she could either go forward into another, much darker tunnel, or she could go to her right. The path to her right had a little cottage, and a young man sitting in front of it.

"Hey!" she said, running over to him. "Did you see a guy in green go through the tunnel over there, or did he go this way?"

"He just passed through the tunnel about a minute ago," he said. "But you shouldn't follow him, unless you have a lantern! Just because it's daylight doesn't mean it's safe. Even in the day, there are some caves and dank spots around here that get pretty dark. Here, you can take this!" The guy reached behind the rock he was sitting on, and a rusty old lantern was in his hand when he brought it back around. "I'm trying to drum up sales of my lantern oil by giving away free lanterns! It's a business tactic!"

She grabbed the lantern from him. "Well, thanks for the lantern, but I can't buy oil from you. I don't have any money."

He frowned. "Not even a single Rupee?"

"What are—no, I don't have any Rupees. If I need any oil, I'll be sure to find some money so I can come back and buy some from you." ' _But I probably won't_ ,' she added in her head. "Bye."

He said bye to her, and she ran back the way she came, wanting to catch up with Link and Midna before they got too far away. The area just beyond the long tunnel was extremely foggy, and unnatural purple fog clouded the ground. Right through the middle was strangely lacking the purple fog, and Link's footsteps were just barely visible through the cleared route. Another tunnel was beyond the foggy area. As Vanna was beginning to wonder how many more tunnels there could possibly be, she exited it and saw that there were no more tunnels in view. A gigantic tree was just around a bend, but more importantly, she could see that Link was in front of it.

"...Link?" she called as she ran up to him.

Vanna slowed as she neared him. He was kneeling, sword in the ground, with his eyes closed. Midna came out of his shadow.

"Why are you here?" Midna asked. "Link told you to go talk to the mayor."

"I did talk to the mayor, but I didn't need to," Vanna said. "I need to talk to you."

Midna groaned. "I told you already, there's nothing I can do about your bracelet."

"But there was a time when you _could_ have done something about it. You started to say that you're not as powerful as you were. I don't know what happened to your powers, but you're _going_ to get them back, and you're gonna use them to bring back NEVA, you hear me?"

"...If I'm bringing back your bracelet, you're going to help me."

"You're the one that broke it!"

"And if you want it back, you're going to help me regain my powers. Nice deal, isn't it? I get my powers, you get your bracelet. What do you say?" Midna said with a grin.

Vanna clenched and unclenched her fists, considering Midna's ridiculous offer in her head before she let out a sigh. She couldn't miss her chance just because she didn't want to cooperate with her. "How am I helping you get your powers back?"

Midna looked toward the tree. "There's something in the Forest Temple that I need you to get... Link's helping me, too, so once he gets up, that's where you two are going."

"Fine," Vanna said. She looked back down to Link, who was still frozen in a kneeling position. "Uh... Link?"

"I don't really know what's up with him," Midna said. "There was this golden wolf in the way, and it lunged at him. It disappeared, but Link just kinda ... fell like that." She shrugged. "He's not wounded, and he's still breathing, so I'm sure he'll be over it in a minute."

It fell quiet, with the only sounds being the chirping of birds and a gentle breeze moving the trees. After about a minute of the awkward silence, Link let out a little groan, shook his head, and got to his feet. His eyes widened in surprise when he saw Vanna standing next to him.

"She's going to help us," Midna said.

"No, she's not," Link said firmly. "It's dangerous out here."

"Yeah, but... It's dangerous to go alone," Vanna said. She smiled at her little joke—she may not have known much about Zelda games, but she did remember that line.

"She's right," Midna said. Vanna was in shock that she was actually backing her up. "It's a lot safer if there's two of you. Besides, we made a deal while you were ... doing whatever you were doing a minute ago. She's going to help us, and then I'm going to help her get her bracelet back so she can go home."

"She needs to go back to the village," Link said. "Vanna, you have _no_ idea what you're getting yourself into."

"I don't care. If it's going to get me home, I'll do it," Vanna said.

"You won't be able to get home if you die! Your life would be in danger. I ain't just sayin' that 'cause I want you off my back, _I mean it_. You could die."

"So could you, but you're still doing it."

"I have a sword and a shield. You have nothing."

Vanna pulled her gun off her belt and pointed it at Link, the tip pressed to his chest. "Laser gun. If I fired this right now, it could kill you in a second."

Link took a step back, eyeing the gun with an edge of nervousness. "Thought that might be a weapon..." he said quietly. "But what about defense?"

She shrugged and clipped her gun back to her belt. "You've got a shield. I'll stand behind you if I need to."

Link huffed. "... _Fine_. But the second you get hurt, you're going back to Ordon."

Vanna crossed her arms. "What makes you think you're the boss of me? I'll go wherever I please." It felt so liberating for her to say that, to finally get to deny someone the option of controlling her.

"I'm not saying that to boss you around. I'm saying it for your own safety. Look at you," he said, waving an arm up and down. "You're a tiny li'l thing."

"I'm almost as tall as you are!"

"You're thin."

"So are you."

"But I'm muscular and thin. You're just thin. And you're, what, a fourteen-year-old girl? I ain't tryin' to be rude, honest, but..."

"I'm _seventeen_. How old are you?"

"...Seventeen."

"Can you two shut up and just go to the temple already?" Midna said. "We're wasting time."

Vanna dropped her arms back down to her sides. "To the temple?" she said to Link.

"To the temple," Link sighed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Deepest apologies for the awful "it's dangerous to go alone" joke, but I had to.


	4. The Monkey Temple

The word ' _temple_ ' brought many images to Vanna's mind. Most of those images were of ancient, luxurious buildings, meant to be a place of worship to gods just as archaic. The inside of a hollow tree was not one of those images.

Though, it wasn't exactly true to say that it was hollow. The tree was by no means empty. There were two lit torches—because having torches inside of a tree wasn't stupid _at all_ —on either side of the entrance, a wooden cage with a monkey in it up ahead, and behind the caged monkey was a wooden platform with an overgrowth of vines, leading to a round door.

"Do you think there's a Hobbit living back there?" Vanna joked.

"What's a Hobbit?" Link asked.

...Vanna wasn't sure what she had expected. "Nothing. I'm gonna try to get that monkey out of the cage."  
  
As she ran ahead, Link hollered for her to be careful. Vanna was in the middle of rolling her eyes when something popped up out of the ground and lunged at her. She let out a shriek and jumped back. The thing was like an oversized blue Venus flytrap, with a big slobbering yellow tongue. Instinctively, she pulled her gun out and shot at it. It was still convulsing from the shock as it was collapsing to the ground. It shriveled up and turned black, and suddenly exploded, leaving nothing behind.

"What ... the ... _fuck?!_ What _was_ that?!" Vanna jumped again when she saw something else coming for her. "What is _that?!_ "

Link ran forward with his sword out, and attacked the monster. Vanna probably would have been impressed by his fighting if she wasn't so caught up in the sight of the monster itself. Its bones protruded from underneath its purple skin, and it had beady green eyes, braided white hair, and large, pointed ears. Its wrinkled face and sparse teeth made him almost look like an old man. A really, really ugly old man. In its right hand, that very nearly dragged against the ground when it was down, was a wooden stick that it tried to use as a sword against Link in their battle.

Unsurprisingly, the monster lost to Link. It screeched loudly before falling onto its back, dead. Much like the Venus flytrap thing had done, it turned black as it shriveled up, and then exploded into nothing. Link twirled his sword in his hand, looking to be showing off, before he sheathed it and turned to Vanna.

"That thing was a Bokoblin, and the plant things are Deku Babas," Link calmly answered.

"Why did they shrivel up and explode?!"

Link shrugged. "That's how evil beings normally decompose, really quick. It's a blessing. Does your world not have...?"

"Abominations like that that _explode_ when they die?" she finished for him as she clipped her gun back to her belt. "No, we don't."

They started to walk up to the caged monkey, who excitedly whooped and clapped at the sight of them. Vanna, however, stopped walking when she noticed that there were huge spiders on the vines behind the cage. She had never been afraid of spiders, but those things were the same size as her head. Link didn't seem to notice them, or if he did he didn't care.

"Not gonna pay any mind to the giant spiders?" Vanna said.

Link looked back at her for a second before starting to fumble around with the monkey's cage. "They're not going to come off the vines, I promise. They're called _Wall_ tulas for a reason. You don't have to stand back there."

Vanna slowly began to approach him at that, but she once again came to a stop. Her phone was vibrating on her belt. She quickly pulled it out and looked at it. A text message from Zi was on the screen.

_Where are you? Dad said he came back to the room in the factory he left you in and you and NEVA were gone_

How was she getting signal? And ... why wouldn't she have gone back to the second she left after getting NEVA back?

She gulped. It definitely should have been like she never left at all. Vanna told herself that maybe however long she spent in Hyrule was how long it would be in her world from her departure to her reappearance, for whatever reason. That was definitely better than her initial thoughts—that her not appearing back right after she left was a sign that she never would—but it was still much less favorable than no time passing at all there while she was away. There was no telling how long it would take for Midna to get her powers back.

_I know you're not going to believe me, but I'm in Hyrule. Don't ask. I don't know. This girl called Midna destroyed NEVA. I'm traveling with her and Link to help her get her powers back so she can fix it. I'll be back whenever she does, don't worry about me._

Just as Vanna sent the text, Link finally broke the cage enough so that the monkey could get out. It jumped up and down happily before climbing up the vines, ignoring the spiders on them. It waved its hands at Link and Vanna from the top. Midna came out of Link's shadow.

"Is that the monkey that stole your lantern? Looks like she's beckoning you," Midna said with a giggle. "Aren't you the popular one?"

"Guess we should follow her," Link said as Midna went back into his shadow. Vanna saw him peer at her in the upper corner of her vision, but she was looking at another text from Zi.

_...Do you remember anyone giving you something that might have been hallucinogenic?_ the text read. It was followed by another. _Where did you tell NEVA to take you? I'm coming to get you_

"Vanna?" Link said.

"Coming," Vanna said. She snapped her phone back to her belt. She'd have to answer Zi after the monkey showed them whatever she wanted to. "That monkey stole your lantern?"

"Kinda. She gave it back, though. You should give me yours. You can't climb with it," he said.

"And you can?" she said, handing it over to him regardless.

He twisted around and opened up a brown pouch attached to the back of his belt, and held the lantern over it. The lantern quickly shrunk down to the size of Vanna's pinky, and he dropped it into the pouch. Vanna's jaw fell open.

"How the hell did you do that?!" she asked.

"It's a magic pouch," Link casually answered.

Vanna was going to tell him to stop messing with her, that there was no such thing as magic, but she stopped herself. She doubted if even the advanced technology of her home would be able to perform such a feat. The only explanation for it really was magic, as much as she had trouble believing it.

Link killed the two spiders with a slingshot—that Vanna incredulously watched him retrieve from his pouch, amazed as it grew to full size in his hand—and once they fell to the ground, they shriveled up and exploded just like the other monsters had. She simply shook her head this time. Hyrule was _weird_.

He started climbing up the vines, and she grimaced as she watched him go up. If someone like him was climbing them so slowly, then surely she would have trouble climbing them at all. She didn't want him to get to the top and then have to wait for her to get up, though, so she went ahead and started climbing as well. Link did end up having to wait at the top for her, but it didn't look like he minded too much. He had a cheeky grin on his face as Vanna kicked her leg over the edge and pulled herself the rest of the way up.

"Shut up," she grumbled.

"I didn't say anything," he said.

She dusted the dirt off her legs and hands. She'd definitely need to be getting some pants and gloves like him. "You were thinking of it."

The monkey tugged on Link's tunic, and ran to the round door. They followed her, and Link rolled the door over with a grunt, allowing the monkey and Vanna to pass through. He came in after them and let the door roll shut behind him. The room they were in now was like a four-way intersection, with three more rolling doors that were clearly supposed to be accessible from a wooden platform in the middle of the room. _Supposed to be accessible_ were the keywords, though. The gaps between the doors and the platform weren't bridged.

Link began to walk up the stairs to the wooden platform, but Vanna stayed put. Her eyes were glued to a _ginormous_ spider, with the pattern of a skull on its carapace, hanging above the platform. The spiders in the last room were like ants compared to it.

"There's a giant ass spider up there!" she yelled to get Link's attention before he walked under it.

At her call, Link tilted his head back. The spider lowered itself from its web, landing on the platform with a thud. Link removed his sword from its scabbard and began to fight it. Vanna watched from where she stood for a few seconds before she thought of something. She grabbed her phone and took a picture of Link fighting the spider. There was no way Zi wouldn't believe her if he saw it. She sent the picture to him, along with a text. _Wasn't drugged. I told NEVA to take me 200 years into the future but it took me to 1598 Hyrule. No way a normal TPort could get you here to bring me back._

She got a new text from him just a few seconds later. _Is he swordfighting a giant spider?!_

_Yeah. Listen, I can't keep texting you back, okay? I have to help Link with stuff. Maybe try to see if your dad could make 2 more NEVAs or something to get you here and bring me back home? If he does I'm inside of a giant tree in the woods of Ordon on September 1st 1598. I guess I'll find out in a bit if that does end up working out. I'll tell you if it doesn't so your dad doesn't have to keep working for nothing._

_Trying to get you back home isn't nothing, but okay. I'm gonna send you updates on what's happening here. No need to respond._ Another text came through right after it. _Stay safe._

Vanna couldn't help but smile at her phone. For how much of a rascal Zi could be, he really was such a sweetheart. She was going to miss him the most while they were out trying to get Midna's powers back.

Her head snapped up when she heard a disgusting screeching sound. The spider was arched backward, writhing around. It, too, shriveled up and exploded. Vanna walked up to Link with the monkey beside her, putting her phone back at the same time.

"Are monsters normal around here?" she asked. She knew that Link spent most Zelda games fighting off monsters, but she was hoping that maybe they weren't actually so rampant.

"They seem to be kinda normal now, depending on where you are, but they didn't use to be normal anywhere. Evil is awakening them."

Vanna had never thought there was truly such a thing as _evil_. What was bad was subjective, and the ' _good versus evil_ ' spiel had never been more than an idea used in fantasy to her. She thought that reality simply had too much gray area to assuredly define things as one or the other. Although Link had nothing to show her that would physically prove that evil existed, like how he proved magic was real with his pouch, just the way he said the _word_ evil made Vanna start to believe in it.

"Right," she breathed out. "...How are we supposed to get to the other doors?"

Link slowly turned in a circle, scouring the room. His eyes lit up after a few seconds. He reached into his pouch and pulled out a lantern—Vanna wasn't sure whose it was, not that it really mattered—and used it to light four torches on each corner of the platform. When the fourth one was lit, more wooden platforms raised from the ground, bridging their way to the door across from the one they came in through.

She was really going to have to get used to things not making any sense here.

The monkey scampered across the newly raised bridge, and clapped at them from the door. They followed her, and once again Link let Vanna and the monkey out before himself. To her surprise, the door led outside. There was a large chasm in front of them, with only a rickety wooden bridge as their way over to the other side. Unreachable from where they stood were even more bridges, that swiveled around every time the wind blew. The monkey ran ahead onto the wooden bridge, and just as she did, a baboon ran up from the other side.

The baboon held up a boomerang that emitted what looked like smoke, and the smaller monkey let out a squeal as she turned around and started to run back. He threw the boomerang, and as it flew it cut right through the ropes of the bridge, making it give in while the small monkey was still trying to run across it. The boomerang flew back to the baboon, and he laughed wildly. He turned around and smacked his ass before running away. Miraculously, the small monkey climbed up the broken bridge and got back to Vanna and Link. She looked around, and sighed in relief when she saw the baboon was nowhere to be found. She then ran back to the door and jumped repeatedly, waving her arms up and down.

Midna popped up out of Link's shadow. "Oh! What's going on?! Has there been a monkey fight?!"

"Another monkey cut the ropes to the bridge while she was on it," Vanna said.

"We might as well go back, then, if we can't go any farther." She looked over at the monkey. "I don't know what's going on, but it seems like she wants to take you two somewhere, so maybe you should just follow her."

Midna went into Link's shadow, and though Vanna was certain they would have done it regardless of her input, they followed her advice by following the monkey back inside. The monkey jumped up onto a rope that went from the wooden platform over to the doorway to their left. She hung upside-down, grasping the rope with her feet, and motioned for them to come to her with her hands.

"She seriously wants us to jump to her, grab her hands, and then jump over there?" Vanna said.

"Looks like it," Link said. "Do you want to go first or should I?"

She scoffed at that. "You really think this, what, forty pound monkey, that's hanging by her feet, is strong enough to swing either of us over?"

Link ran forward and jumped right at the end of the platform. His hands clasped the hands of the monkey, and he swung back and forth once before he let go. He landed on the other side, then turned and looked at her.

"Yeah, she's strong enough," he said.

Vanna pursed her lips. If the monkey could support Link's weight, she could support hers, but that was never the only cause of her concern. She didn't think she could make the jump to reach the monkey in the first place. Even if she could do that, she was scared she wouldn't make the jump over from the monkey, and she'd end up falling about fifteen feet down. She instinctively reached over to her left arm, only for her fingertips to graze against her teal shirt as a rude reminder that she left her TPort at home. There was no way to cheat her way out of having to jump.

Without even thinking about it, she backed up, ran forward, and jumped off the edge of the platform. The monkey caught her outstretched hands, and Vanna swung forward in her grip. She let go of the monkey's hands and went flying over to the other side. She landed on the balls of her feet and stumbled forward into Link. His hands grabbed her arms, helping her stabilize her balance. He had that same cheeky grin from earlier. Embarrassed as she was, she was glad he had been there. It would have been a lot more embarrassing if she fell over.

"Sorry, didn't mean to bump into you," she mumbled.

He let go of her arms. "It's all right. You would have fallen on your face otherwise."

She resisted the urge to reply that she wouldn't have, even though she agreed that she would have. The monkey jumped down off the rope and walked up to the door, prompting Link to open it. He made a noise of frustration when he saw that it was pitch black in the room beyond the door.

"Reach into my pouch and pull out a lantern, will you?" he asked, sounding slightly strained.

"I don't understand why you can't just let the door close and get it out yourself, but okay," Vanna said as she got behind him.

"These doors are hard to get rolling over to the side. It's better to just keep it here."

Vanna reached around his scabbard and shield, and dug into his pouch, feeling a little awkward as she did so. She felt something glass, some scratchy fabric, and something wooden, which she assumed to be his slingshot, before she felt the rusted metal of a lantern. She pinched her fingers around its tiny handle and pulled it out, and it returned to its full size after she did. She twisted the knob on it, making the flame start to burn, and she walked into the dark room with the monkey. Link slipped in after them, and the door rolled shut behind him. With the light of the lantern, they could see that a corridor to their right and a corridor to their left were the only places they could go.

"Left or right?" Vanna asked. "I say left," she said at the same time as Link said "Right."

"What if you go left and I go right?" Link suggested.

"That's how people die in horror movies." Immediately after she spoke, she realized that what she said would mean nothing to him. "Nevermind, you don't know what horror movies are. But seriously, people die when they split up, especially when they go into dark places. We're sticking together, and we're going left."

Vanna walked off to the left, not giving him time to respond, with the monkey at her side. She heard Link let out a resigned sigh before he followed after her.


	5. Five Little Monkeys

"And would you look at that," Midna said. "A dead end with nothing but a few pots. Nice choice, Vanna."

Vanna narrowed her eyes, staring at the pots. "There's something in that one! It's moving!"

She went up to the pot, grabbed it, and flipped it upside down.

She didn't know what she expected to be in there, but she definitely wasn't expecting it to be a chicken with an eerie humanoid head. Her hand flew to her gun immediately. The creature didn't really look threatening, but Vanna was wary of trusting anything in Hyrule. She looked over to Link, wondering if he was familiar with whatever it was. The way his face was contorted in something between confusion and disgust told her that he wasn't.

The chicken-human-thing got to its feet and shook out its feathers. "Phew! Out at last! Gracious... Once I got in there, I couldn't get myself back out! You were a big help... Thanks!"

"You speak English?!" Vanna said in bewilderment.

It tilted its freaky, long head. "I am speaking Hylian, as are you."

"Okay, sure, call it _Hylian_ , whatever. Why were you in a pot back here?"

"I've been looking for an item and my son, Ooccoo Jr. in here, you see. He must be so scared without his mother, gracious, yes! You must need something here, too. Shall we try working together for a while, fellow adventurers? My name is Ooccoo, and you may not think I look like much, but I can be quite helpful! I can even warp you out of here if you want to leave!"

"Warp?" Vanna said. "Like, get us out instantly?"

Ooccoo nodded. Vanna thought it would be nice to be able to get out quickly, especially to someone like herself who was spoiled by teleportation. She looked up at Link, silently asking for his approval. He shrugged.

"Oh, but you must introduce yourselves if we are to be adventuring together!" Ooccoo said. "Tell me, what are your names?"

"I'm Vanna, that's Link, and that little shadow girl is called Midna. You should probably avoid her."

Midna grunted lightly and disappeared into Link’s shadow. Vanna smiled.

"It is good to meet you three, yes!" Ooccoo said. "Link, I do notice that you have a magic pouch! Would you mind if I resided in it as we traverse this temple?"

Link raised an eyebrow but nodded regardless. He held it open, and Ooccoo flew up to it. She shrunk down and fell inside. Vanna got back up to her feet, and they started to walk back the other way.

"... _So_ many weird things here," she said. "And speaking of weird things, what was up with you and that golden wolf earlier?"

Link pursed his lips for a few seconds. "He jumped at me, and the next thing I knew, I was in this snowy realm with a castle... I don't know how else to describe it. The wolf turned into a big undead knight in golden armor, and he taught me a secret sword technique."

"A _secret_ sword technique? How the hell can a sword technique be secret?"

"He said his secrets were only for the one who carries the blood of the hero... No one else figured how to do them on his own, I suppose," Link said.

They came to a stop when they approached a giant spiderweb that kept them from getting out of the corridor. Link unsheathed his sword and slashed at it until it had been broken through enough for them to pass. Vanna ducked through first and headed into the room ahead, with the monkey and Link following behind her. One of those Deku Babas popped out of the ground, and she shot it like she had the last one before looking around the room. There were two more rolling doors on different sides of the room, though one had a lock in front of it. The sides of the room were made accessible by multiple wooden platforms grounded in the waters below. A bridge near the locked door led over to four poles topped with turbines before a gated alcove.

The monkey hopped over the gaps between the wooden platforms. She was clearly heading over to the locked door, but she stopped just before the final gap and cowered in fear. There was another giant spider hanging over the gap. It was smaller than the last one, and strangely had a checkerboard-like pattern on its carapace rather than a creepy skull. Link shot at it with his slingshot, and it descended from its thread. After landing, it promptly walked right off the edge into the water and died. The monkey cheered before jumping over the last gap and running up to the locked door.

"Not the brightest spider or monkey, huh?" Vanna said. "Why don't you go check and see if there's a key somewhere behind that other door, and I stay here with the monkey?"

"You just said that we shouldn't split up," Link said.

She shrugged and jumped over the gap, walking to the monkey. "Yeah, but we were in a dark corridor, and anything could have been in there. This room is lit, and doesn't have any freaks of nature waiting to kill us." Once next to the monkey, she turned back to face Link, and sat down on the dirt. "And the monkey doesn't want to be lonely, so..."

Link chuckled lightly and shook his head. "Uh huh, sure. All right, I'll be back."

He walked through the other door, and she could see out of it enough to tell that it led back outside, making her even more glad she didn't go. She looked at the monkey, who had sat down beside her.

"...You're quite cute for a monkey," Vanna said. "I was always kinda freaked out by monkeys. I never thought you guys were scary or anything, but you look so human and so _not_ human at the same time, you know? Like robots before Mr. Rider managed to make them look indistinguishable from humans. It's just really weird. You're all right, though. You remind me of my dog, Rade." She sighed, missing him already. "...You need a name. How about Rose? You have a rose in your hair, after all. Or fur, I guess."

The monkey smiled at her, and started to play with her hair. She held one long red lock in her left and another in her right, and repeatedly smushed them together, almost like she was trying to braid them.

"You braid with three sections, not two. Not that I really have any room to be coaching you on how to braid, though. I never quite got the hang of it. You'd think I would be good at it, since I was raised in a house of four girls, but I'm honestly shit at it. One time I tried to braid my friend Maddie's hair and it got so tangled that she had to cut a chunk of it out. She didn't talk to me for like, three weeks. I still think that's not fair. I mean, I'd be mad if she did it to me, but I've never been a silent treatment person. Mainly 'cause I only have like four friends so I can't afford to be losing one, but it's just a dick thing to do. Like, she knew what she was getting into when she asked me to braid her hair. I even told her that she may as well stick a full pack of gum in there, but she insisted, so really, whose fault was it?"

"I cannot _believe_ you're talking to a monkey..." She jumped at the voice— _Midna's_ voice.

"Midna?!" Vanna said, looking around. "Where are you?!"

"I hopped over into your shadow," Midna said as she came out of it. "Yours is more comfortable than Link's. It's also a lot more fun to be in the shadow of someone who talks to monkeys, or talks at all, actually. Link never spoke a word when we were alone together."

"Maybe because you're overbearing?" Vanna said.

"Probably," she agreed. "And, well, he hasn't been in a good mood lately. I bet he would talk to monkeys too if he wasn't so busy sulking because of his girlfriend being kidnapped."

' _Ugh, he has a girlfriend? Damn it..._ ' Vanna knew it shouldn't have sparked the reaction in her that it did—she had _just_ met the guy—but anyone would have been let down to find out he was in a relationship. It was like the age-old woe of finding out your favorite boyband member was gay. You would never have ended up with him anyway, but it still stung.

Just then, the door he had exited rolled open, and he stepped back through. He held up a shiny silver key between two of his fingers, waving it side to side to show it off. He jumped the gap to get over to them. Vanna stood up and brushed the dirt off her.

"That was pretty quick," she said.

He only nodded in response. He placed the key in the lock and turned it, and the lock fell down to the ground. Rose and Vanna walked into the room after Link opened the door, and he followed. The room was round, with a higher level circling the edge of the room that that gradually declined to an open lower one. In the middle of the lower level was a caged monkey atop a large wooden pole.

Rose quickly ran around the higher level, jumping from a bridged gap, and made her way down and to the pole. She climbed it and shook the bars of her friend's cage, desperately trying to free him. When she knew that Link and Vanna were aware of the second monkey's predicament, she climbed back down and looked at them pleadingly. They started to follow after the monkey, him a bit ahead of her. Vanna was busy taking in the scenery of the roofless, earthy room, bathed in the near-twilight that shone down from above.

She didn't even have time to snap out of her transfixion when the bridge suddenly collapsed beneath her. Vanna fell down and landed on the balls of her feet about four yards down, and tumbled forward onto her hands and knees. She squeezed her eyes shut and hissed as pain reverberated up her calves.

"Are you okay?" Link called.

She just barely opened her eyes and looked up. Link had managed to make it across the bridge before it fell, and he was staring down at her with worry. "Fine," she said through her clenched teeth.

Vanna slowly got up, the balls of her feet and her ankles practically screaming at her, as Link raced down the remainder of the decline and came over to her. "I'm all right, really," she reiterated.

Link didn't look like he believed her. Truthfully, the pain was steadily fading away. She knew she'd be fine. The drop wasn't high enough to actually impact her ankles or break her feet or anything. It was just enough to make them feel like that.

She walked over to the pole with the caged monkey, trying to be as light on her feet as she could. She already had an idea what to do to get it down. She just had to shake the pole enough to make the cage tip over. It might hurt the monkey, sure, but it was better than leaving it up there to die. There was only one problem... She wasn't strong enough. Vanna pushed the pole with all of her might, and it didn't even budge. She humphed in frustration and turned to Link.

"Think you're strong enough to shake this and make the cage fall, since you're so much more _muscular_ than me?" she said.

"Of course I'm strong enough," he said. "It's just a wooden pole. I wrangle 500-pound goats for a living."

"You're a goat wrangler?" she asked.

He nodded and roughly shoved the pole, making it wobble. With two more shoves, the cage fell to the ground. It broke on impact, freeing the second monkey. The monkeys started to celebrate, only to be interrupted by god-awful shrieks from up above. Two Bokoblins dropped down into the room. Vanna wanted to kill them with her gun—if only to prove herself capable of something after not being able to move the pole—but Link dispatched them in seconds. All she could think of as she watched him was that he was a _goat wrangler._

"So, what, you're like, part-time hero, part-time goat wrangler?" she asked as he put his sword away.

"I'm not quite a hero..." he said. "I've only been doin' ' _hero stuff_ ' for a couple days now. Before this week, I never fought a single monster. Been a goat wrangler for a few years, though."

"Your fighting skills are pretty damn impressive for someone who only started fighting this week."

"I started training with a sword when I was pretty little. I just never got to put my skills to the test until now."

Midna came out of Vanna's shadow and cleared her throat. "Those monkeys are waiting for you two over by where the bridge was. Maybe follow them instead of just standing around talking?"

"Why were you still in my shadow?" Vanna asked.

"Like I said. It's comfier than Link's. Now get going." She went back down and merged with Vanna's shadow. "Oh, are you going to name this new monkey, too?"

"I might have named the girl monkey Rose," she explained to Link when he raised an eyebrow at her. She looked down at her shadow. "And maybe I will, Midna. Do you have any name suggestions?"

"He's a _monkey_ ," she said.

"Well, you just missed your chance to name him. His name is Poppy, now."

* * *

It turned out that Rose and Poppy wanted Link and Vanna to save more of their friends. When two more monkeys—Daisy and Tulip—had joined their little brigade, the four of them led Link and Vanna back outside to the bridge that the baboon had destroyed.

"Oh no," Vanna said immediately when they got out there. "No. Nope. Nuh uh. This isn't happening."

She knew what they were going to do before they even did it. As they had traversed the inside of the tree, there were several times when they made her and Link swing from their hands as they hung upside-down on ropes to cross gaps, and that was clearly what they were going to do here. Vanna barely wanted to cross the six feet gaps, twenty feet above ground indoors—there was no way in hell that she was going to jump from monkey to monkey across a thirty-foot long _abyss_.

The monkeys positioned themselves upside-down, equal distances apart along the rope spanning from their side to the other. Poppy was the first in line. He grinned and waved his hands at them. Midna emerged from Vanna's shadow, smiling devilishly.

"Ah, are shadow magic and levitation wonderful! I'm _so_ glad I don't have to do that," she said. "Looks like Tulip wants you to cross first, Vanna."

"That's Poppy, and I think he wants Link to go and me to stay behind...?" she said, her voice lowering in volume and raising in pitch with every word.

Midna let out a groan. "No! If I'm bringing back your dumb bracelet, you're going to work for me! You already made Link go get that key by himself! No more sitting around!"

"You've been sitting around in my shadow this whole damned time!"

"Masters sit while servants work!"

"When did you become my master and I become your servant?!" Vanna yelled. "If anything, you should be _my_ servant as payback for what you did to me!"

"There's no need to start a fight," Link intervened. "Just ignore it, Vanna. She said the same thing to me."  
  
"What, and you just took it like a little bitch?" she asked.

"I couldn't exactly respond at the time..." he said. "It doesn't really matter. Getting into fights with each other ain't gonna help anything. It'll only make this harder than it has to be."

"What's making this hard is her and her snarky attitude!"

"I wouldn't be so ' _snarky_ ' if you'd just do what I say!" Midna said.

"Will you just get in my shadow and shut up?!" Vanna said. "I'm already helping you, I don't need your shit!"

Midna humphed and went back down. "Don't think that I'm listening to your command by doing this. I'm just tired of seeing you. Cross the gap, or you're not getting your bracelet back."

"Don't think that I'm listening to your command by crossing the gap," Vanna shot back.

She definitely was listening to Midna's command. If she hadn't threatened to not bring back NEVA, then Vanna would have never thought about crossing the gap. She gulped before she took a running leap off the edge. Poppy caught her hands, and as soon as she swung forward, she let go and flew into Tulip's hands. Not once on her way across did she even let herself swing back; she wanted to get it over with as quick as possible. After a mere five seconds—the most terrifying five seconds of her life up to then—she let go of Rose's hands and landed on the opposing cliff, stumbling forward a bit. She walked off to the side, not wanting to be in Link's way. Just a few seconds later, he landed next to her and swiftly fell into a roll that he came out of on his feet.

The monkeys jumped from the rope and went up to the door. Link and Vanna walked behind them, and he opened the door when they got to it. When all of them were in, Link let the door roll shut behind him, and there was a sudden thump. They looked back at the door to find that wooden bars had slammed down in front of it, keeping them from exiting. A screech in the room prompted them to look back around.

It was the baboon from earlier. He was standing atop a wooden pole in the center of the room, surrounded by a number of more poles in a circle. He lifted up his boomerang, still veiled in that black mist, and sent it flying forward. It cut through the stems of what Vanna had learned were Baba Serpents—which were basically bigger, angrier, red Deku Babas—that had been hanging from the ceiling, making them fall to the ground. They started moving themselves forward by chomping their jaws, coming straight for them. The baboon caught the boomerang back in his hands and started laughing maniacally. Like he had done earlier, he turned around and slapped his ass at them.

Link took care of the Baba Serpents, and the four monkeys raced forward. They all climbed the pole that the baboon had jumped over to and ambushed him. He flailed around, trying to get them off, but they hung onto him with all of their might. Link ran to the pole, and Vanna realized what he was going to do. Running over, she yelled for the monkeys to watch out before Link slammed into the pole. The monkeys jumped off the baboon for their safety, and he toppled over to the floor with a loud bang.

Now that she was up close to the baboon, Vanna noticed that what she had thought was just part of his head was actually a giant bug clinging to his head. She wrapped her fingers around the edge of the bug and tried to pull it off, thinking that it might be the reason he was so pissed. Link grabbed on and began to pull as well. When the baboon began to come out of his stupor induced by his fall, he started to try to get back up. The monkeys rushed in to help once more, holding him to the ground. His struggles proved to be of help to them; with a rough jerk of his head, the bug came off. They dropped it, and Link stabbed his sword through it. It curled up and exploded.

The baboon vigorously shook the monkeys off him and stood up. He scratched his head and looked around the room, almost like he didn't even know where he was. He slowly turned and saw Link, Vanna, and the monkeys. He let out a squeal and ran away, jumping out of the room through a hole in the wall. His boomerang, that he had left without, started to spin around in place and rose up off the ground. It was shining white, the smoky emanation nowhere to be seen. Glowing wind swirled around it, bringing up orange leaves on the floor.

" _I am the Fairy of Winds who resides in this boomerang_ ," came a soothing female voice. " _You have freed me from evil, and I now have my true power back. Please... Take it with you, use it to aid your quest, and may both my power and my blessing go with you. If you focus power in your boomerang before releasing it, it will unleash the power of wind, aiding you in unforeseen ways._ "

It whirled around the room on its own accord, and came over to them. Vanna reached out and grabbed it, looking at it with incredulity. She peeked over at Link to see his reaction; he looked less mystified and more enthusiastic. He was grinning with his mouth open. Maybe it was normal for Fairies to live inside of otherwise inanimate objects, or maybe this world was so weird that barely anything could shock him. ...Probably the latter.

"Do you know what she means about ' _focusing power_ ' in this?" Vanna asked—there was no point in commenting on the obvious.

Link grabbed it from her. He held it tightly, and wind started to circle it again. "She means to focus power by transferring your own magic power into it," he said.

She blinked a few times. "So, you're a goat-wrangling magic-wielding hero," she tonelessly said.

He winked at her. Her breath hitched in her throat.

Link broadly swung his arm and let the boomerang go. It flew up to a turbine above the door and made it spin around. As it spun, the wooden bars that had trapped them in went back up into the wall. The boomerang flew back to Link, and he caught it. The monkeys excitedly went over to the door.

"Looks like even the monkeys are satisfied now," Midna said as she came out of Vanna's shadow. "Okay, let's continue combing this place. We already found something good, so let's keep searching places we haven't looked yet."

When they were all back outside, the monkeys ran to the side of the cliff face, and they pointed past a bridge perpendicular to them. Beyond it was a pillar that housed another monkey whose cage was hanging from a tree, and another Bokoblin. A pole in the middle of the bridge had a turbine on top of it, just like the turbine inside. Link threw the boomerang at the turbine. The bridge spun as the turbine did, stopping just as soon as the ends met each cliff face. Vanna shot the Bokoblin when they were at the middle of the bridge. It didn't even see the laser beam coming. She felt kinda bad about it for half a second.

Link threw the boomerang at the thick strands of spider silk that held the cage to a branch of the tree. The cage fell down and broke apart, freeing the monkey. The new monkey celebrated and joined its four friends.

"Well, I guess there are still some monkeys you haven't freed yet!" Midna said. "At this point, you should just save them all and see what you can get for it! I bet they could help us find what we're looking for."

"What exactly are we looking for?" Vanna asked. "You still haven't told me."

"I'll tell you what _I'm_ looking for when we find it..." she said. "But Link here is looking for his kidnapped friends."

"Friend _s?_ " Vanna said.

Link nodded. He looked angry thinking about it. "Monsters raided my village and kidnapped all of the children. I was locked away in a jail cell and I managed to escape after being kidnapped, but everyone else... They could be being held captive anywhere."

Midna cleared her throat. " _You_ managed to escape? I think you're taking a little bit too much credit there..."

"Midna helped me escape. I never would have without her," Link said. "Happy, Midna?"

"Very. Oh, and Vanna?"

"What?" she said.

"What's this monkey called?" Midna asked, mockery clear in her words.

"...Lotus."


	6. Boss Battle

"And there's the last one," Vanna said with a tired sigh. Their search for monkeys came to an end with eight of them saved. Rose, Poppy, Daisy, Tulip, Lotus, Buttercup, and Daffodil were waiting for them in another room. "What should we call you? Lily?"

"That was Ma's name," Link quietly said. Vanna looked at him, and his eyes widened a bit. "Sorry, I didn't mean to say that out loud..."

"It's fine," Vanna said. "...Oh, um... I meant to apologize to you earlier today..."

He drew his eyebrows together. "For?"

"For making you upset, about your parents... And I wanted to tell you that I know how you feel. My dad died when I was fourteen."

"You didn't upset me," he said, turning around to leave the room.

Vanna walked beside him. "I didn't?"

Link shook his head. "They've been dead for nine years. I don't get upset at just the mention of them anymore."

She frowned. She still thought he looked upset that she brought them up, so she decided it would be better to stop talking about it.

They were quiet the rest of the way back to the room with the monkeys. When Lily joined the group, all eight of them climbed up a thick branch that reached out into the middle of the room, above a large abyss. Vanna felt the same dread come over her that she had felt when they had to jump from monkey to monkey outside. Instead of them being lined up, however, each one was held around the ankles by the hands of the monkey above it. They started to swing back and forth.

"...You go first," she said.

Link nodded. He waited for the monkeys to start to swing toward them, then he ran and jumped. The monkey on the bottom of the chain grabbed Link's hands, and they swung forward. Link let go and landed safely.

Vanna lined herself up with the monkeys. There were several times that she started to run forward a bit, only to stop when she didn't think the timing was right. When she had the timing of their swings down pat in her head, she ran forward and jumped as high and far as she could. Her hands were caught, and she was swung over. She let go at the apex of the swing, and landed a few feet in front of where Link had. If she was an old person, her heart would have given out by then.

Right ahead of them was a huge rolling door, with a huge lock in front of it. It had to be the matching lock to the big key they had found in the temple. Vanna's face fell when they approached it. From farther away, it didn't look like its size would be a problem, but up close it was clear that neither of them would be able to reach the lock, even if they stood on the tips of their toes with their arms all the way up.

"Hey Midna, think you could levitate your way up there and unlock it for us?" Vanna asked.

"I'm a shadow. I can't physically interact with the objects of this world. You two will have to find a way to do this yourselves," she said.

Part of Vanna thought she was just being lazy, wanting her and Link to do everything for her, but it seemed pretty reasonable that she couldn't do it.

"Maybe you can get up on my shoulders?" Link suggested.

Vanna looked up at the lock. That would probably get her high up enough to reach it. She agreed to do it, and Link handed her the key before crouching down on the floor. She situated her legs on either side of his head, trying to ignore how awkward it felt—not only because the situation itself was kinda awkward, but because of his sword and shield and dangling hat. She placed her hands on his shoulders and he placed his on her legs to keep her steady as he rose. When he was all the way up, she stretched her arms above her and placed the key inside the lock. She twisted it a few times, making part of the lock spin. Link quickly stepped back when the lock started to fall so that it wouldn't land on him. His movement made Vanna lose her balance and start to fall backward off him. She ended up with the pits of her knees on his shoulders and her arms wrapped around his neck.

"Let me down!" she demanded.

Link crouched down again, and she got off him. Vanna rubbed the backs of her thighs; the edges of his wooden shield had scratched and dug into them.

"Sorry," he said as he stood up. "We both would have gone down if that lock hit me, and that wouldn't have been pretty."

"I know, but having wood grating your ass and thighs isn't pretty either," she said.

"If only there was something you could wear on your lower half to prevent things like that..."

She glared at him. "It was nice out and I didn't think I'd end up doing anything like I've done today. Just open the door already. Something big has to be in there."

Sidestepping the giant lock, Link got up close to the door and placed his hands on it. He jerked his body over, and the door went rolling open. Another door behind it rolled in the opposite direction. If rolling the first one didn't make the second one automatically roll, they would have been doomed. They ran through when there was a big enough gap between them, and the doors immediately rolled shut behind them.  
  
The room was the largest they'd been in yet. There were several holes in the wooden walls that purple water cascaded from. The waterfalls fed a purple lake that composed a majority of the room. In it was a twisted tree, and Bomblings stood atop the few thick logs that floated here and there. Two spots in the water were bubbling. They started to bubble more and more until two _huge_ Baba Serpents, big enough to devour a Skulltula whole, burst out, and one of them lunged forward at Link and Vanna. She involuntarily let out a shrill scream and pressed herself against the door as much as she could. Thankfully, it couldn't get close enough to attack them. It slowly retreated.

Link pulled out the boomerang, and held it in his hand for a few moments before throwing it. The whirlwind it created picked up one of the Bomblings and brought it over to the head that tried to get them. The serpent grabbed the Bombling in its mouth and chomped down on it as the boomerang made its way back to Link. It chewed a bit before suddenly twitching and throwing its head back. The Bombling must have exploded in its mouth. It sunk down into the water, squirming as it went.

Link repeated the process with the other head. Vanna was about to say ' _That was easy,_ ' but she realized that that likely wasn't the end of it when the water started bubbling again. This time, there were three bubbling spots instead of two. The bubbles came up with more intensity as the entire room began to rumble. With a humongous splash, a monster just as humongous came out of the water, along with the two heads again on each side of it. Upon closer inspection, Vanna saw that the stems of the serpents were like its arms—it was all one monster. The monster leaned its main head forward and opened its mouth in three different sections, revealing an outstretched eyeball in place of its tongue. It let out a roar so loud that Vanna's hearing aids briefly flickered to white noise and the room rumbled again.

She quickly noticed that things could very well be going downhill fast. The logs and the Bomblings on them had sunk. Without them, there was no way to fight back. They stayed pressed against the door, where they at least couldn't be reached.

"Got any ideas on what to do?" she asked Link, her voice slightly shaking.

Just as he opened his mouth to respond, the sound of a whooping baboon rung through the room. The baboon swung on a rope from one of the holes in the wall to another. He reached into the hole, and his arm came back out with a Bombling.

"We could be saved by a baboon!" Link said.

The baboon grabbed the Bombling with his feet as he swung on the rope again, and Link threw the boomerang at it. The winds of the boomerang led the Bombling from the baboon to the mouth of one of the serpent's heads, and came back to Link. The baboon came out with another Bombling, which Link was intending to use against the other serpent. Instead, before the Bombling could reach the serpent head, the main one ate it. The monster roared and thrashed around in pain before its head fell to the ground with a thump, its eyeball exposed.

Link and Vanna ran forward, having the same idea. They took quick turns attacking, him slashing at the eyeball with his sword and her shooting at it. The monster drew itself back up. A bulge rose in its throat, and it opened its mouth to spew out purple liquid in a large stream. They ran around to avoid the stream until it finally stopped. At that point, the baboon swung back down with another Bombling. Link used the boomerang to make the bomb creature go over to the remaining serpent's head, and the main one didn't intercept it this time. The serpent sunk down under the water after the Bombling exploded in its mouth.

Link sent the next Bombling that came at the main head, and once again it thrashed around before falling and exposing its eyeball. Rather than shooting at the eye this time, Vanna let Link slash at it as she shot inside of the mouth. It roared and reared backward after they had inflicted a lot of damage to it. It wailed as it wildly flung its head around, slamming into the water and splashing it everywhere. It started to make crackling sounds as it began to shrivel up and turn black. Rather than exploding as soon as it died, it stayed up, hunched over in the air for a few seconds as the room made a transformation. Light flooded in, and all of the water turned light blue.

When it exploded, it wasn't quite like the other explosions that occurred upon the death of an enemy. Small, paper-thin black squares that emitted a black aura—similar to what had cloaked the boomerang—exploded outward slowly, the hundreds of pieces gently spinning in the air. Suddenly, they all came together to shoot toward Link and Vanna, and they formed a strangely shaped gray hunk. It had circles and irregular lines on it that glowed cyan every few seconds. Vanna wasn't quite sure what it was supposed to be.

Midna came out of her shadow and giggled. "Well done! That's ... what I was looking for." Her ponytail came up over her head, turned orange, and morphed into a big hand that she used to grab the item. She kept on talking like it was nothing. "That's one of three Fused Shadows. They're what the Light Spirit called dark power... Do you remember what that spirit said, Link? About how you had to match the power of the king of shadows? I think the other Light Spirits have the rest... If you two want to know exactly what Fused Shadows are... Well, maybe I'll tell you if you find the other two. I guess you'd better do your best to find them, huh?" She giggled again.

"Wait," Vanna said, "if Link uses the Fused Shadows to help him gain power like the ' _king of shadows_ ,' what about _your_ powers? How do you get yours back?"

Midna brought her ponytail-hand back to where it was and how it had been, the Fused Shadow disappearing in the process. She turned her body. "The Fused Shadows will help me, too. Let's not waste any more time here when we could be looking for the other ones..."

She floated forward a bit, and with a flick of her wrist, black squares erupted on the ground. They faded into a jagged black shape with glowing lines like the ones on the Fused Shadow. There were circular ripples in the middle that had more little black squares floating up out of it.

Midna went to the center and turned back to Link and Vanna. "I'll get you out of here... Just walk onto this portal."

They did as she said. Vanna wasn't quite ready for what happened next. Her vision went black and she felt her body break up into hundreds of paper-thin pieces. It didn't hurt, but it wasn't a pleasant feeling, either. She was left with a headache when she felt all of the pieces come together again. Her sight returned to her slowly. They were now outside in one of the springs that she had passed, and it was night time. It had only been about five when she got to Hyrule. Were they really in the temple for that long? Sudden hunger pangs told her yes, they were.

She turned her head to Link, and he raised up a finger. He was staring straight ahead silently. She followed his line of eyesight, but nothing was there except a little pond with miniature waterfalls and trees behind it. It was beautiful even in the dark of night, but not ignore-someone beautiful.

He lowered his hand after a minute. "Sorry, a Light Spirit was talking to me," Link said. "He told me Hyrule isn't saved yet and that I have to leave the woods and go east, to Eldin. He said my kidnapped friends are being held there..."

Vanna wondered if Hyrule had mental institutes and if she should try to check Link into one. "Yeah, I'm sure he did. So, are we gonna go there in the morning? It is night time after all."

"' _We_ ' _?_ " he said. "No. No ' _we_.' You can't come with us. It's not safe for you out there."

She furrowed her brows. "Midna said I have to help her, and I'm not going to give up my one and only chance to get NEVA back just because you want to _protect me_ or whatever."

Midna came out of her shadow. "Actually, he's right. It really isn't safe for you, and you can't come with us."

"But—" Vanna started.

"I won't hold it against you," she interrupted. "Those lands are covered in twilight, and if you go into them, you'll turn into a spirit. Link, however, is the Chosen Hero, and that grants him protection from turning into a spirit. And I'm from the Twilight, so I just become my not-shadow self when I'm in it. You wouldn't be able to see either of us, and you'd end up alone and lost. So, Link can leave in the morning, and you can stay in Ordon. We'll come back to get you once he's gotten rid of the twilight in Eldin."


	7. Dawn of the Second Day

Vanna let out a little groan when she woke up. Her bed felt so much harder than normal that she wondered if she had fallen off it in the middle of the night. She opened her eyes.

...Right. She was in _Hyrule_.

She was in Hyrule, in Link's house, sleeping on a thick blanket on the wooden floor. After they had come back here last night, they ate a quick meal, and Link put down some blankets and pillows on the floor for them to sleep on. Even though Vanna was exhausted, she had trouble falling asleep. As she lay there, her thoughts went wild. She'd never played a Zelda game, but she had played enough of other games to know that the first boss was always the easiest. The boss in the Forest Temple was the most horrifying thing she had ever seen, so what could outdo it? What other monsters were out there waiting for them?

Despite how troubling it was getting herself to doze off, her sleep was nice once she finally fell into it. No dreams, as always, and she woke up completely refreshed. She sat up and stretched out, and looked over at Link, where he was peacefully sleeping a few feet away from her. Vanna got off her makeshift bed, sat down at his little table that she had put her belt and stuff on for the night, and she grabbed her phone. She synced it up to her hearing aids and went to put on some music. As she was searching for a song, she suddenly remembered that Zi should have shown up in Ordon yesterday if Mr. Rider had succeeded in making new NEVAs. She chose a random song and sent Zi a text.

_Sorry if I woke you up, just wanted to let you know that you never showed up yesterday. Tell your dad not to bother trying to make the new NEVAs since he clearly won't be able to..._

She got a response a minute later. _Was up already. My dad says he's still trying anyway_

Of course he was still trying. Mr. Rider was even more stubborn than her.

 _So, did you have a good first day in Hyrule?_ read the next text she got from him.

_It was terrible. There were so many monsters and so many draining things we had to do. Didn't help that I was stuck with asswipe Midna. Literally the only good thing about it was Link cuz he's cute_

_Send me a picture of his faaace!!!!! I'll kill you if you don't. Love you Vannyboo_

_Love you too Zizi but he's sleeping right now_

_So?_

_Zi._

_You creepshotted him yesterday when he was fighting that spider, don't act all high and mighty_

_But you wouldn't have believed that I wasn't on drugs if I hadn't_

_Well I won't believe you that Link is cute if you don't send me a picture of his face! I was doing some research on the game and he looked pretty cute in it but I need to see with my own eyes_

_Send me a pic of him in the game, I'll let you know how he compares._ About half a minute after sending the text Vanna received a picture of a 3D rendering of Link. It was pretty spot on, ignoring the giant eyes, and she told Zi as much.

_Good but you're still sending me a pic later. So while I was researching, I found some stuff I thought you'd like to know. You're in the game called Twilight Princess, from 2006. If you're going along with Link, that means you're going to have to go through 7 temples, plus 2 more places that are kinda temples but kinda not. You'll have to fight a boss in each one. Diababa in the Forest Temple, Fyrus in the Goron Mines, Morpheel in the Lakebed Temple, Stallord in the Arbiter's Grounds, Blizzeta in the Snowpeak Ruins, Armogohma in the Temple of Time, and Argorok in the City in the Sky. Then there's Zant in the Palace of Twilight and Ganondorf in Hyrule Castle. When you get to the bosses you should tell me. I can send you some strats to help you out, k?_

Reading the names of the bosses made Vanna feel like she was reading something in a completely foreign language. The only one that rung a bell was Ganondorf. _We defeated Diababa last night, but I think it might be a little bit before we get to Fyrus cuz Link has to go do some other stuff. You can go ahead and send "strats" to me if you want._

_And if I don't want?_

_Then I hate you._

_Ouch :(_

Zi and Vanna continued texting back and forth, talking about anything and everything. It was only when the rumblings of Vanna's stomach started to become painful that she looked at the time and realized they had been texting for over two hours, and Link _still_ wasn't awake. She got up and went over to the hearth to try to warm up the remainder of the stew they ate last night by herself. After a few minutes of vigorously rubbing sticks together to try to start a fire, she was tapped on the shoulder. She dropped the sticks as she jumped. Vanna looked behind herself to see an amused Link with tousled hair and sleepy eyes. She hadn't heard him coming because of her music. She went over to her phone on the table and paused it, making Link give her a confused look.

"Sorry, I couldn't hear you. I was using this to listen to music," she said, tapping it. The look on his face didn't go away. "It's high-tech, you wouldn't get it. Tech is short for technology, by the way. Anyway. Did you get enough sleep?"

"I could've slept for a few more hours if Midna hadn't woke me up," Link said, his voice raspy. He cleared his throat. "She said we should get going soon, and that she tried to talk to you but it was like you couldn't hear her. She also said you were too much of an idiot to get the fire going..."

Vanna crossed her arms. "I'm not an idiot. My people have just advanced beyond the stone age and we don't need to light fires to warm up and cook food anymore. If anyone's an idiot..."

Link raised his hands defensively. "I wasn't sayin' I agreed with her. I was just relaying what she said. Besides, fires can be hard to start even for people who know how to do it. I'm quite lucky..." He crouched in front of the hearth and reached his left hand into it, and suddenly one of the logs caught fire. Link smiled up at her. "Magic power. I was never properly trained, so I can't do too much, but I can at least do things like focus it into weapons for stronger attacks and start a little fire with it."

"Can you show me it up close? The fire-making magic?" Vanna asked.

Link stood, held up his left hand, and pointed up his index finger. Vanna's jaw dropped as a small flame flickered above it. While that was the most awesome thing she'd ever seen someone do, her eyes were drawn down to the back of Link's hand. He had a birthmark on it that was one triangle comprised of three smaller ones. He must have noticed her looking at it, because he let the flame stop burning and he curled his pointer finger in with the rest of them. He brought his hand down and held it out in the same way that someone expecting a fist bump would, and he looked down at it.

"D'you think my birthmark is weird?" he asked.

"Well, yeah," she said. "Normally birthmarks are little blobs that have no real shape. That thing almost looks like a tattoo."

"Really? I've only other seen one other birthmark, so I never knew if mine actually was weird or not. That one was blob-ish, but I thought maybe we were both just weird, having little areas of our skin be darker for no reason... But not knowing what's really normal is just one of the things you deal with if you live in a village with only fourteen people."

Vanna's eyes widened. "Only fourteen people?"

Link nodded. "Yeah. We used to have a few more, but..." He stopped himself, frowning for a second. Something must have happened to them; she guessed whatever happened was what ended his parents' lives, or the lives of others he was close to. "I had only met twenty people in my life before all this started. I've met twenty-three now that I've been out of Ordon."

"Midna and I are two of the only people you've ever met that aren't from Ordon?" she asked, sadness in her voice. Even as someone who never had the biggest group of friends or the biggest family, she couldn't imagine the isolation of living knowing only twenty-some people.

He nodded again, but he didn't look upset about it at all. "There are two others. Princess Zelda, and Coro, that boy who lives in the woods and sells lantern oil."

"Isn't Coro from Ordon?"

"I ain't sure where he's from, but he's not from here. He just lives nearby Ordon."

"I thought we were in Ordon this whole time."

"Once you get past the bridge, you're in Faron's territory." He went over to his counter and lit another, smaller fireplace underneath part of it, and sat a kettle on top.

"So, there are other settlements in Hyrule, right? With more people?" Vanna asked.

"Yeah. Up north there's Castle Town, to the east is Kakariko Village, and there are other settlements here and there that I don't know by name. I've never been to them, but I hear Castle Town and Kakariko are pretty big. My ma and pops visited Castle Town a lot, bringing produce there an' all, and they always used to tell me stories about how many people lived there. They said that on the busiest days, you could barely walk through the streets, and barely hear your voice when you spoke."

"Sounds like my home," Vanna said as she sat back down at the table. "There are 300,000 people in my city."

Link's eyes shot over to her, and he stared at her blankly for a few seconds. "Did you misspeak?"

"No, there are 300,000 people in my city," she said, smiling at his disbelief. It was nice to be on the other side, getting to see him react to something he never thought was possible. She could see the ' _How?_ ' written on his face. "I think my world has probably been around longer than yours, so we've had more time to grow our population." She shrugged. "So, I take it Hyrule's pretty small then, huh?"

"I don't know how many people live in Hyrule exactly, but I know it's got less than _300,000_. If I had to guess I'd say it's probably got less than 1,000 people."

Vanna almost snorted. "I went to school with 1,000 other students." She was suddenly glad that she had finished her required classes before summer break, and sad that there was a chance she wouldn't be back home in time to attend her graduation in December.

"Ah, you went to school?" he asked.

"You didn't?" she slowly asked back.

"No. I was taught by my parents, and then by the other adults in my village after they died. We don't have a proper school down here. In this world, schools are really just for the children of rich families that live in Castle Town."

"...I don't know if I should say that that sucks or not," Vanna said with a laugh. "In my world, schools are pretty much free, and kids are required to attend for twelve years."

"I don't know if I should say _that_ sucks or not," Link said. "Are you even a kid anymore when you finish?"

"Technically you still are, yeah. You start 1st grade at five years old, and advance to the next grade at the beginning of every year until you graduate from 12th grade at seventeen. Does that make sense?" she said. He nodded. "Good. Trust me when I say it used to make a _lot_ less sense."

"I understand what you're saying, but to be honest with ya, it doesn't really make sense to me at all. I guess you just need to know a lot of stuff in," he waved his hand, "uh, whatever country you come from?"

"The United States of America. Sometimes it's called the USA or the US, but mostly we just call it America. And... Well, honestly, when you get to the later years, a lot of it is unnecessary stuff that you don't really need to know to get along in life. Like, I never learned what to do if I were to end up in some weird alternate universe with magic and man-eating monsters."

"I bet you're real smart. You can figure out what to do on your own," Link said as he retrieved two bowls and two teacups. He put teabags—which she was impressed that they had—in the cups.

Vanna silently took the compliment, rather than saying what she was really thinking; she may have been smart in _her_ world, but that didn't mean anything here. She didn't need to know calculus, she needed to know how to light fires and prepare food that wasn't from a box with directions on it. She needed to know how to fight, how to defend herself, how to _survive_. She wouldn't get by everything with just the pull of a trigger.

Link ladled the stew into the bowls, poured water from the kettle into the teacups, and took several quick trips to bring the bowls, cups, and utensils over. Vanna thanked him as he sat down. She picked up her spoon and was about to go ahead and dig into the stew when she realized that his head was bowed and his eyes were closed. She thought for a second that maybe he had fallen asleep—he fell asleep like _two_ seconds after he lay down last night—but then it dawned on her that he was praying. Awkward as she felt about just sitting there while he prayed, she decided to let him finish before eating, letting her spoon hover above her bowl in an attempt to not be disrespectful. He raised his head and opened his eyes after a few moments, and wasted no time shoveling the stew into his mouth.

"You eat like an _animal_ ," Vanna said.

"Whah? Ah hungwy!" he said with his mouth completely full, giving her an innocent look. Some juice ran down his chin, and he wiped it off on the back of his hand as he swallowed. "A man's gotta eat, and if he has a gal like Midna hiding in his shadow that enjoys rushing him, then he's gotta eat fast."

"I rush you for your own good," Midna said, not showing herself. "The twilight continues to spread every second. _I_ wouldn't really mind it, but I don't think you'd like it if this whole world became cloaked in twilight, now would you?"

There was that word again. Twilight. The stuff that supposedly turned people into spirits, that Midna was from. It was even in the title of the game that followed the events currently happening in Hyrule.

"Midna, who's the Twilight Princess?" Vanna asked out of curiosity before finally taking a bite of her food.

Link perked up. "She called Zelda the Twilight Princess the other day. Zelda's trapped in the twilight, like everyone else in it, and she's the Princess of Hyrule."

Given that Midna stayed silent, it seemed that she agreed with what Link said. It made enough sense to Vanna. If the title of the series was the Legend of Zelda, then it was natural for the subtitle to also be about her.

Link and Vanna stayed silent, too, while they ate—or, they didn't _talk_ anymore, at least. Link was far from silent as he gobbled down his stew. He finished it before Vanna was even halfway done hers, then finished his tea in one go. She could tell that he burned his tongue by doing that, but he brushed it off. He got up and placed the bowl and cup in his sink. Over his white undershirt and tan pants that he had slept in, he put back on the clothes he had discarded last night. Vanna scrunched up her nose when she saw him slipping his boots onto his bare feet.

"Feel free to hang around my house, sleep here, read some of my books..." Link trailed off. "Maybe just don't use the hearths?"

"What about food, though?" she asked. "Even if I did use them, what would I eat?"

"Go down to the village. They'll keep you fed. They'd ... probably enjoy the company, now. With the kids being gone and everything..."

"I'd enjoy the company, too," Vanna said. She grabbed her phone. "Um, could I take a picture of you before you go?"

"Sure. I haven't gotten a chance to see how I look in this." Link finished his outfit by putting his hat on, and began to clear things off a wooden storage chest. Midna groaned. "It'll only take a few seconds, Midna," he said.

"What are you doing? Do you want to sit on that chest while I take the picture or something?" Vanna asked as she stood up.

"I have my pictograph box in here. I'm getting it out for you."

She guessed that ' _pictograph box_ ' was what they called cameras. "I have my own."

He stopped moving things, and looked back at her with his eyebrows close together. "Where? All I saw that you had on you was your weapon and your music-listening thing."

"My music-listening thing is also a picture-taking thing," Vanna said, waving it. She opened the camera app and held it up. "Smile?"

He mustered a just-barely-there smile, and she took the picture. As she was walking over to him with her phone in hand, he said, "You already took it?"

"Yeah." She held the phone out to him. "Here. You can double tap to bring up a little bar that'll let you zoom in to get a closer look if you slide your finger up it. Once it's zoomed in, you can move your finger across the screen to look at different areas of the picture. I can't print the picture from that, if you were gonna ask."

Link grabbed her phone with excessive caution, and awkwardly tried to hold it the same way he saw her holding it earlier. He gently tapped the screen with his finger, zoomed in, and panned around before handing it back. "Thanks. I thought I'd look worse after yesterday..."

"You'd look better in the twilight," Midna said under her breath.

"All right, all right, I'm going," Link said. "See you soon, Ilia."

"Ilia?" Vanna repeated.

Link's eyes got big. "Did I say Ilia...?" he asked. She nodded. "Sorry. I don't know why I did. Bye, Vanna."

"Bye, Link," she said as he walked toward the door.

He shut it behind him, and she stood in the room motionlessly for a few moments before she headed back to the table to finish her stew. As she was walking, she sent Zi the picture of Link, with an accompanying text: _I take your request for a face pic and raise you a full body pic. You're welcome._

* * *

Vanna stayed in Link's house for some time after she finished her stew, just taking everything in. She felt like she learned a lot more about him from looking around his house than she had from talking to him. She might not have found out that he was a seventeen-year-old goat-wrangling magic-wielding hero by the items in his house, but she did find out that he was a glasses-wearing book nerd that enjoyed writing and taking pictures and didn't seem to care too much for tidiness or matching tableware, among some other things. Though she felt slightly bad for messing around with some of his stuff, her curiosity got the better of her. After finding thin, rectangular, brown glasses near one of the forty-two books he scattered about his house—she counted—she slipped them onto her face, only to promptly take them off because of how blurry they made her vision. Her inspection of the house led her up to one of the lofts, where there was a desk with some pencils in a cup, a dip pen, an ink bowl, a shirt, some cloth, and most interestingly, a worn book that looked different from the rest. Vanna flipped the book open to the first page, where there were four handwritten letters that she had never seen before. It only took a few seconds for her to figure out what they said— _Link_.

She went on to the next page despite the feeling that she had that it was his diary. She probably wouldn't have actually read it anyway, but she quickly realized that she couldn't even if she wanted to. While ' _Link_ ' was easy enough to be translated, there was no way she could have read one page written in that alphabet, despite its similarities to the Latin one. She closed his diary, and opened up the next book she found, wondering if maybe Link had come up with his own secret alphabet or something. It turned out that that wasn't the case. The alphabet he had written in had to be the one used by everyone in this world, and she let out a sigh when she found this out. If she couldn't read his books, then she pretty much had nothing to do in his house.

Vanna left Link's house and went to the village about an hour after he left. Even though she knew only thirteen other people lived there, she was still shocked by just how small it was. Five houses were situated in a lush valley, with a lake off to the left of them. A dirt path led right through the village and up a hill that she couldn't see over. She was planning to go see the mayor first, but she ended up following the path to see what was over the hill.

Her heart raced faster with every step she took, not because she thought there would be something dangerous back there, but because she wasn't used to the freedom of going places by herself. If she hadn't been in such a state of shock yesterday, she would have felt what she was feeling now, but even stronger, running through the woods to catch up with Midna and Link. It wasn't a bad feeling though; she wasn't particularly nervous, and she wasn't scared. It was just exhilarating, to the point of being overwhelming.

When Vanna got to the top of the hill and saw that it was just a farmhouse and pasture at the end of the path, she turned and started to walk back down. She went to the house that Link said was the mayor's and knocked. The door clicked and opened ten seconds later to reveal the mayor.

"Ah, it's you," he said.

"Yeah, it's me. Sorry about running off yesterday. So, um, it turns out that I can actually get back to my home, but... Well, I was with Link yesterday—"

"You were?" the mayor interrupted. "How was he? When I heard that Link had just left town yesterday, I came out to his house to look for him, but he was gone and only you were there."

"He's fine. We spent last night at his house, and he left about an hour ago. He said he'll be back soon, and then we're going to go look for the kidnapped children together." Maybe that was a bit of a lie on her part, seeing as she was really going along to look for the Fused Shadows for Midna, but she did want to help Link look for his friends, too. "He told me I could stay at his house and come visit the village some while he was away."

The mayor let out a disgruntled sigh. "Shame I didn't get to see the lad, but it's good to know he's doing well. I don't believe I got the chance to properly introduce myself or this village to you. My name is Bo, and I'm the mayor here in Ordon Village. We've been seeing rough times recently, so I'm sure a visitor would help bring some liveliness back into our little community." He held his hand out. "What's your name?"

"Vanna," she said, shaking his hand.

"Vanna, welcome to Ordon Village. Come on now, let me give you a tour of our little village."


	8. Goats and a Ghost

Vanna's second day in Hyrule/Ordon—she still didn't quite understand if Ordon was actually part of Hyrule or not, but the way she was seeing it was that Ordon was to Hyrule as Puerto Rico was to America—went by quite well. She met everyone currently living in Ordon, though some of them only briefly. There were three couples, then the mayor, and a seventeen-year-old young man named Fado. With the exception of a woman named Uli, they were ... not the prettiest people she'd ever seen, and she pitied Ordon's gene pool. She spent most of the day with either Fado, or Uli and her husband Rusl. Those three were the most bearable. The other two couples and the mayor were mopey, depressed people that she couldn't stand to be around for too long, despite the fact that she understood why they were like that. Seeing them miss their children so much made her miss her family.

Her third day she mostly spent with Uli. Rusl, even though he had been badly injured when the village was raided just days ago, went off to search for the kids, and Vanna didn't want the very pregnant Uli to be alone. Uli said she was only seven months along, but she was already having somewhat frequent Braxton-Hicks contractions and she looked like she could pop at any moment. Though it was clear she missed her son Colin deeply and was worried for his well-being, she stayed serene and collected. Vanna found it very calming to be in her presence. Later that day she decided to go visit the ranch, and Uli let her borrow a pair of grayish-blue pants that she couldn't wear anymore with her belly, since Vanna was still running around in her bodysuit. Vanna helped Fado round up the goats at night time. It was fun at first but quickly became agitating when the goats decided they didn't want to listen. Fado told her that Link and his horse, Epona, could do it in under a minute, and she could barely believe him. It took the two of them nearly half an hour to get the last of the goats inside.

Her fourth day she spent with both Uli and Fado on the ranch, lounging around on the pasture and hanging out with the goats. She was just amazed by those things. They were bigger than any goat she'd ever seen in America, and they were blue, each with a single horn that somehow formed in a circle. She fell in love with one of the baby goats, and it seemed to fall in love with her too, staying near her for most of the day. Vanna was upset when she had to leave it for the night, though she was happy to not be smelling dirty goats and their droppings any longer. Uli let her take a bath in her tub, which she ended up regretting. She had to use water from the lake, which was cold with autumn being just around the corner. It was made worse by the fact that she couldn't even get a hair tie to hold it up with, because nobody in Ordon had hair past their shoulders. She tried to put it up in a bun without a tie, but it continually fell down every time she moved her head. She gave up and resigned to the shivers that came from letting her wet hair hang against her back.

Her fifth day, she was woken up in the early hours of the morning by a knock on Link's door. Vanna tried to fix her tangled and still-damp hair as she walked up to it. She nearly jumped back when she opened the door. On the little deck was a pointy-eared man wearing a tank top and short shorts, with heavily bagged eyes that were open as wide as humanly possible. He had on a tall red hat, and a pole with a short red flag was on his back. He held a tan envelope.

"Hey! I am the postman. I have come to deliver a letter for a Miss Vanna," he said.

"That would be me..."

"It is a letter from Link." He handed it to her and hummed a short jingle. "My business is concluded! Onward to mail!"

The postman leaped off the deck and ran away, making a little noise with every step he took. Vanna shook her head and looked down at the envelope. It had a word in Hylian text written on the front, that looked like _ilHhhH_ to her at first. She remembered that she had seen the same _h_ in Link's name in his diary. After realizing that those _h_ 's were really _n_ 's, she saw it. It was her name. What she viewed as _il_ was a _V_ , and the _H_ 's were _a_ 's. It should have been obvious that it was her name from the start, but she had never received a physical letter in her life. She opened up the letter, not knowing why. Even ignoring the fact that she couldn't read the alphabet, a lot of the letters were smeared. After trying to read the first three words— _I qap Pld_ —she gave up and decided to get someone to translate it for her. Bo had told her he always woke early, so she went over to his house and hoped that he really was awake.

His door opened after a few seconds. "Good morning, Vanna. Is something wrong?"

"Link sent me a letter, but I can't read Hylian, and it's smudged up. I was wondering if you could read it to me...?" she said, feeling slightly embarrassed.

"A letter from Link? This is great! I was starting to worry for the lad. Come on in." The mayor moved over to let Vanna inside and closed the door behind them. He took the letter from her hand and chuckled. "The woes of a left-handed person, eh?" He cleared his throat. "' _I got rid of the twilight in Eldin. All of the little kids are in Kakariko Village, and they're safe. I was going to come back down to Ordon as soon as possible, but they wanted me to stay with them for a while. You can tell all of the parents except Mayor Bo that their children are fine so they don't have to worry any longer. Let them know I'm with the kids, but they can't come back yet since there's no wagon in Kakariko that can safely get them home. Link._ '"

Bo's face had fallen by the time he finished reading the letter. He looked away.

"Sorry about your kid..." Vanna said.

He took in a deep breath and slowly let it out, shaking his head. "She's sixteen, you know, and the other kids are all from four to ten, so if they're fine, I'm sure Ilia will be fine..." It was clear that he didn't believe what he was saying.

So Ilia had to be Link's girlfriend. Vanna suppressed a shudder; if this man was Ilia's dad, what the hell did she look like? Hopefully more like her mother, but given that Uli was the only attractive Ordonian woman she'd seen, maybe it was actually better if she looked like her dad. "I'm sure she'll be fine, too," Vanna said. "If Link could find the younger kids, there's no doubt he'll find her. Especially since, you know... Their relationship. I bet he won't stop until he's found her."

"Just have to pray that when he does find her, she'll be all right." Vanna could see tears welling up in his beady little eyes.

She patted his arm. "She will be. I guess I'll go now. Thanks for reading the letter to me."

Bo handed it back over and rubbed his eyes. "You're welcome. Don't worry yourself about tellin' the other folks about their kids. I'll do it later when they're all up."

They said their goodbyes, and Vanna left his house. She slowly paced through the village, her head leaning back and eyes scanning the pinks and yellows that filled the morning sky. Ordon had such pretty sunrises and sunsets. She decided to enjoy the sunrise while taking a walk, since she didn't have much else to do. She walked down the path back to Link's house, and then down the sunken lane that led to Faron. The raised earth on either side of the lane had trees on it, blocking the view overhead, so she went into the spring where she could get a good view. The sound of heavy breathing off to the side of the spring made her still. Vanna ever-so-slowly turned her head.

In an alcove was a glowing golden wolf, with a glowing red eye.

She turned to face it fully. "You're the wolf that brought Link into that snowy realm and taught him a ' _secret sword technique_ ,' aren't you?"

The wolf nodded.

A _wolf_ understood her. What was next? Was a tree going to start talking to her?

"Well... What are you doing here?" she asked. "Link's in Kakariko Village."

The wolf stood and started to walk toward her. She took a few steps back, into the waters of the spring. Her heart started to beat heavier. She thought the wolf was supposed to be nice.

"I don't want any trouble! I was just telling you that he's not—!"

Vanna let out a scream as the wolf pounced at her.

Her vision went white, and she never felt him come into contact with her. The unending whiteness before her faded into what must have been the same snowy realm the wolf took Link to. The wolf was sitting several feet in front of her wagging his fluffy tail back and forth. Far behind him were white towers with blue roofs that looked like they met together at the base of a castle dozens of feet beneath the snow. Though snowflakes blew through the air, it wasn't cold at all. She didn't even feel the wind.

The wolf tilted his head back and howled, and in the blink of an eye, he was gone. In his place was a big undead knight, just like Link spoke of. His head was a skull with a glowing red orb in one of the sockets. The rest of his body looked relatively normal, ignoring his prominent ribcage and the fact that it was colorless and see-through. He faded in and out of varying levels of transparency while his golden armor and weaponry stayed solid.

He got into a battle stance, sword and shield at the ready. Vanna pulled her gun out and held it toward him, her finger hovering over the trigger. He broadly swung his sword, making her gun fly right out of her hands and land some twenty feet to her right.

"Do you truly think such a weapon will be of help to you here?" he said in a deep echoing voice.

"I already killed a couple things with it, so ... a little?" she said.

He quickly swung his sword down on her, making her fall onto her back. "No. Look how fast and easily I knocked it out of your hands. If that were to happen to you in a battle against an enemy—and it undoubtedly would—then your life would come to an end in an instant. Going against fiends without a sword and shield on you is asking for death."

Vanna lay on her back for a few seconds, taking deep breaths as the pain went away. She shakily raised a hand to where his sword collided with her shoulder. She felt no blood, no tear in her clothes, no sign that he had attacked her at all. She slowly got up, her body still quivering. "You could have just said that..."

"A demonstration makes a better point than words."

She glared at him. Who the hell stabs someone just to prove a point? "I _already knew_ that I couldn't survive with just a gun here. I know that there have to be heavily-armored or thick-skinned enemies that a laser will do nothing against. But I don't have anything else, and you attacking me isn't going to change that."

"Go to the basement of Link's house and search the crates. Return to me once you've found a sword and a shield."

Before she could respond, her vision faded into white, and then to black. She opened her eyes and blinked several times in quick succession; she was sitting on her legs in the spring, and the golden wolf was sitting in front of her. She groaned as she stood up. Water had flooded into her boots, the pants Uli had given her were all wet, and so was the bottom of her bodysuit. She took off her boots, socks, and pants, and put them in the grass to dry before leaving for Link's house, hoping none of the Ordonians would see her on the way, because it seriously looked like she had pissed herself. She had to use her phone for light in the basement because Link took both of their lanterns with him. Vanna groaned again when she saw that his basement had racks on two sides that were _filled_ with crates.

Fifteen crates later, she hit the jackpot. She found a sword, shield, and baldric in one of the crates, and she took them out. She looked in the crate to see if there was maybe anything else that could be of use to her, but it didn't seem like it at first. There was a little green dress, or tunic she supposed, some small brown boots, and a red belt. She lifted up the tunic and smiled; there was a magic pouch underneath it. She snatched it up, and just to make sure it was actually magic and not just a pouch, she dropped her phone inside of it. Her phone shrunk down to a minuscule size, the flashlight sending out only a tiny beam of light. Her work done, she got her phone back out, put the crate away, and went back up to the main floor with her new items.

Vanna checked out her things on the main floor since she could get a good look at them there. They were all quite dusty. The metal shield had shiny rims and decals, a blue base, a red bird, and a small white section with a red design on it, but most interestingly it had a yellow decal identical to the shape of Link's birthmark. She wondered if it was specially made for him when he was younger and he forgot about it. The sword, once pulled out of its mostly brown scabbard, was more spectacular than she expected it to be. The blade had three large golden diamonds on each side, while the grip and part of the curved cross-guards were red. She put everything on—with a decent amount of trouble, mostly from adjusting the baldric to fit her—and left Link's house satisfied.

The wolf was waiting in the alcove again when she got back to the spring. Like the last time, he pounced at her, they ended up in the snowy realm, and he turned into an undead knight.

"You look much more ready to take on the perils of this world now," he said.

"But I'm not really, considering I've got no clue how to actually use what I got," Vanna said. "How did you even _know_ that there was a sword and shield in one of the like twenty wooden crates in Link's basement?"

"I put them there myself. The sword and shield you have were mine in my younger days of life."

That made her feel weird. She was using a dead person's stuff. "Wait. Are you ... his dad?"

"He is my great-great-grandson." He got into a battle stance again. "If you are to be fighting alongside him, you must learn how to fight. Draw your sword!"

* * *

It simultaneously felt like she was in the realm for just minutes, and hours at the same time. It turned out that the latter was correct. When Vanna left the realm, the sky was still pinks and yellows, but it was from the onset of dusk, not dawn. She had been in there the entire day. The Hero's Shade—which was what he told her to call him when she asked for his name—taught her the basics of swordfighting; the horizontal slash, the vertical slash, the diagonal slash, the stab, the spin attack, and the jump attack. The slashes and the stab weren't too bad, but the spin attack and jump attack made her _beyond_ frustrated, especially the jump attack. She was certain that out of all her time in there, majority of it was spent trying to perform an at least _adequate_ jump attack. She was so excited when she finally timed it just right and sent the Hero's Shade onto his back, though part of her felt like he only fell backward to make her feel good. He told her to return the next day to practice with him more.

She felt like she was hit by a train as soon as she was out of the realm. Exhaustion, hunger, thirst, and aches that she hadn't felt while she was in there washed over her. Wanting to eat and get to bed as soon as possible, Vanna put back on her still-wet clothes and went down the path to the village. She dropped her baldric off in Link's house quickly. Fado was just heading into his house when she got to the main part of the village.

"Vanna!" he said. "Haven't seen you all day! I was just about to start makin' my dinner. Do you wanna come in and have some with me?"

She accepted his offer and followed him into his house. He started grabbing things off shelves as she slumped down in a chair.

"Not sure where you were, but you missed a good day today. Feels like life is back in the village, knowin' that the tots are safe. I thought you mighta gotten back home," he said.

"Nah. I wish..."

"You don't like it here?" he asked with a frown.

She pursed her lips. "I like it. It's beautiful, the weather's perfect, the people are nice... But it's not _home_. And I've never really been away from home before now, with the exceptions of short little vacations my family would take, but at least then I'd have my family with me, y'know?" She shrugged. "I'm just ... starting to feel more homesick with every day that passes."

Vanna surprised herself by saying that. She barely wanted to admit to _herself_ that she was homesick, much less someone she'd known for four days. She stayed quiet after her confession, letting Fado rattle on more about how excited everyone was about the children being safe, how the goats were today, and whatever else he wanted to talk about. She kinda zoned out after a while. Once they ate, she thanked Fado for the meal, and went back to Link's house. She fell asleep on the wooden floor, not even bothering to take off her boots or lay out blankets and a pillow.

Her sixth day in Ordon was a lot like her fifth. She woke up in the morning, went to the spring, and practiced with the Hero's Shade. He wasn't as hard on her as he had been the previous day. They actually spent a decent amount of time just walking around the realm, and Vanna took several breaks to go get food this time. Her seventh day was much the same, as was her eighth day. She had found by then that she actually preferred spending her time with him than with the Ordonians. He might have been scary to look at and a hard-ass while teaching, but he was nice to be around.

Around midday on her ninth day, the Hero's Shade and Vanna were taking a walk around the seemingly never-ending realm when her body started to shake around. It was like someone she couldn't see was repeatedly pushing her from the side.

"What's going on?!" she worriedly asked.

"Link is trying to wake you up," the Hero's Shade said. "I will return your consciousness now and go into his subconscious."

Her vision turned white, then black, and when she opened her eyes, she was sitting on her knees in the alcove. The Hero's Shade was in his golden wolf form right ahead of her, and Link was to her right, hands on her shoulder.

"Hey, Link," Vanna said. "Good to see you again. I almost forgot what you looked like."

"You were with him?" Link asked, peering toward the wolf.

"Yeah. I've been spending a lot of time with him over the past few days, practicing with my new sword and all. The sword and shield I have were his, before you ask. He wants to go into your subconscious." She stood and backed up, leaving room for the wolf to jump at Link.

Link got to his feet and drew his sword, and the wolf let out a low growl before pouncing on him. The wolf faded away as Link fell to his knees. Midna popped out of Link's shadow, smiling.

"Did you miss me?" she said.

"Hilarious. Have you considered becoming a comedian?" Vanna said.

Midna looked down at Link, ignoring what she said. "We would have been back a lot sooner if it weren't for him not being able to say no to the kids. But, good news is that Link got his horse back, so now it won't take too long for us to get anywhere. Link's going to talk to the mayor and try to plan out a course of action for us, and then we'll be on our way."

Vanna frowned. Their course of action would most likely bring them to another temple right away. Goron Mines was next, if Zi was right, and they'd be fighting Fyrus, which was surely some sort of fire monster. On the list of things Vanna never wanted to do, _be on fire_ was pretty high up there.

"What happened while you guys were out there?" she asked.

Midna recounted what all had gone down. Link retrieved sixteen Tears of Light that belonged to the Light Spirit Eldin, dispelling twilight from the province. He found out that the Gorons, a tribe from Death Mountain, had recently turned their backs on the people of Kakariko Village. Link tried to scale the mountain to find out what had happened to make them change so suddenly, but a hostile Goron wouldn't let him pass. At the request of the children, Link decided to stay in the village for a few days, which Midna didn't seem happy about at all. As he was about to start his walk back down to Ordon, his horse came running to him.

"So, you didn't really miss too much," Midna said. "Anyway, the Gorons only recognize strength, and Mayor Bo is the only person who was ever able to earn their trust through it. Link's not strong enough to take on the Gorons now, so he's hoping Bo can help him. We're certain that the next Fused Shadow is somewhere on the mountain, so we really need to get past the Gorons."

"What about me, then? If _Link's_ not stronger than a Goron as he is, there's no way _I'll_ ever be stronger than one. Maybe I'll have to stay behind again..." Vanna said.

Midna saw through her ploy. "There's no reason why you can't just stay close to Link while he takes care of the Gorons. But, you know, if you really don't want to go up the mountain, you don't _have_ to... If you don't want your bracelet back, that is." She grinned.

Vanna clenched her fists. "I'm going," she said through her teeth.

She just needed to ignore the part of her wanted to say ' _fuck it_ ' and get used to living in Hyrule so she wouldn't have to put up with Midna any longer. She needed to go home.


	9. Village to Village

Midna dove back down into Link's shadow, leaving Vanna to stand in the alcove until Link was finished with the Hero's Shade. Link stood up and put his sword away after a few minutes. Without needing to say anything to one another, they made their way out of the spring. Just beyond the exit was a tall reddish-brown horse with a white tail, white mane, white feathering, and a white marking on her face in a shape that horses from Vanna's world could never have. She didn't know much about horses, but she guessed from her size that the horse was a Clydesdale, or Hyrule's equivalent of one at least.

"This is my horse, Epona," Link said. He lovingly stroked her before grabbing her reins.

"She's pretty," Vanna said.

Link started to lead Epona down the lane, and Vanna walked beside him. He dropped her reins when they got to his yard, and they went down into the main part of the village without her. Mayor Bo was standing outside of his house.

"Link?!" he yelled. He leaned forward to get a closer look. "Whoa, it _is_ you, Link! You're safe and sound! Your clothes... What happened to you, lad?"

"Bit of a long story," Link said as they got up to him.

"C-come quick! Inside, both of you!"

Bo opened the door to his house, and ushered them inside. They all stood on the main floor together.

"So, all the kids are in Kakariko Village, with a man called Renado who says he's a friend of yours," Link said to the mayor.

"That's good! Yes, Renado's an old friend. If they're in his care, then we can relax." Bo leaned forward again, looking excited. "Don't keep me waitin', lad! Tell me about my little girl! You found her, too, right?"

"Not yet..." Link said with a heavy frown, not looking Bo in the eyes.

"I see... That ain't what I wanted to hear..." The mayor let out a huff. "Ahh... But Link... I guess I need to think of all five of those poor kids, not just my own... They're all in danger. What I should be askin' is how I can help out..."

Link perked up at that. "I heard from Renado that you're the only one who ever bested the Gorons of Death Mountain. Vanna and I need to get up there, but there's no way they'll let us pass right now. How'd you do it?"

"It's true, I did defeat the Gorons in a contest of strength and earned their trust," Bo said. He smiled. "With the help of a little secret. I _can_ teach you the secret, Link ... but can you two promise me that you absolutely, positively, will _not_ disclose it to anyone?"

Link and Vanna agreed to tell nobody, and Bo led them into the back room of his house. In the middle of the dirt floor was a raised ring.

"Link, you've heard of sumo wrestlin', right? Gorons like to match strength in sumo contests. Luckily for you, the basics of sumo are the same as stoppin' chargin' goats... You wanna hear the basics of the ways of sumo?" Bo said. Link eagerly nodded. "If you're gettin' in a sumo match, chances are you're in an arena like this. The first fella to push his foe outside the arena wins. Step forward and grab your foe, strike a fleein' foe with your hand, and sidestep an attackin' foe. Three techniques, all of 'em pretty basic. Master all three and you'll be shovin' folks out of the arena in no time, lad! So, there you go: the basics of sumo. Rather than explain a lot, why don't we just get to it? First we change, then we sumo! Since you don't have sumo attire, just wear your pants in the ring."

Vanna was smiling as she nearly skipped her way over to a sturdy wooden rack along the back wall. She hoisted herself up and turned around to sit on it, her feet dangling off the edge. She watched nonchalantly as Link stripped himself down to nothing but his tan pants. He was more muscular than she imagined him being, but not overly muscular, with no hair to be seen on his chest or under his armpits. She thought that if he was about a foot taller, he'd be perfect—but it was hard to think about that for long when she was pondering his lack of body hair, attractive as she may have found it.

"Do you shave?" she asked abruptly.

He looked taken aback by her question. "Um, no. A lot of Hylians aren't very hairy, even grown men... I come from one of the more hairless families."

She noted something off in his answer immediately. "How would you know that a lot of Hylians aren't hairy if you've only ever met like twenty of them? Especially when all the men here are hairy."

"I don't know if you've noticed my ears..." Link reached up and tapped the pointed tip of his left ear. "I'm not the same race as the people here. I'm Hylian, and they're ... well, just humans, like you. Their race doesn't have a special name like Hylians do."

Vanna hummed in thought. "I was meaning to ask you about your ears." She paused, before tacking on, "I like them."

She started to regret those words as soon as they left her mouth. Was it weird to compliment people on their ears? Her question was answered when Link let out a short laugh, and said "Thanks," with no hint of insincerity in his voice.

Bo came back into the room wearing just a mawashi and strips of cloth wrapped around his knees. Vanna grimaced at the sight and turned her attention back to Link.

The two got onto the raised arena, and each took a turn raising one leg up in the air and stomping it down. At Bo's call, they rushed toward each other. Vanna couldn't help but cringe each time one of them slapped each other. They were slapping _hard_. They seemed evenly matched at first, but Link ended up triumphing. For their second match, they each stepped it up. There was a split second where Vanna was certain Link was going to go falling backward off the arena, before he sidestepped and pushed Bo off.

"Not too shabby, lad!" the mayor said as he got up. "You've gotten a sight stronger in the short time you've been gone, Link... Strong as you are, though, you can't hope to beat the Gorons wrestlin' with power alone. Those Gorons are made of rock! Naw, the secret to beatin' the Gorons ... is locked away in that chest." Bo held his hand out toward a chest sitting along the wall. "Take it with you, lad."

Link hopped off the arena, went over to the chest, and opened it. He reached inside, and his hands came back out with a pair of iron boots. They looked ridiculously heavy.

"You can probably tell, that iron is magic, lad. Those boots weigh nothin' if your feet aren't in 'em, and whoever wears 'em won't be easily pushed around, even by a Goron. If you're fixin' to fight a Goron, be sure to wear those boots. Let's be square, though: neither of you are ever gonna tell _anyone_ about those boots! 'Specially Renado!"

Vanna got off the rack as they once again assured Bo that they wouldn't tell. Link went to put the boots inside one of his pouches, only to pull other things out first. He sat one of the rusty lanterns and a bottle filled with water on the ground, saying the lantern was Vanna's and she could have the bottle. She dropped both of them in her pouch, along with her phone—fearful that it would fall off her belt and she'd lose it forever—and frowned as she saw how little room was left in there with just those three items. It looked like Link was storing everything he had in the smaller of his two pouches, and he still had more room in his than she did, because his items shrunk to a smaller size. She brushed her disappointment away, reminding herself that it could carry more than any pouch of the same size from her world could.

Link put all of his clothes and gear back on, and they bid their farewells to Bo. Link stopped walking once they were just outside of Sera's Sundries.

"I'm going to my house to grab some food for on the way to Kakariko. You should go in and see if Sera'll give you some ... feminine stuff ... before we go," Link said. He looked uncomfortable, but not as uncomfortable as Vanna felt when she got what he meant.

' _Kill me. Kill me now._ ' "Thanks for your concern, but I-I'm good. I ... haven't... You don't have to worry about that," she struggled to get out. She could feel her cheeks tingling wildly. ' _Why. Why. Why._ '

Link looked away, starting to blush. "Just because you haven't started yet doesn't mean you never will. You're seventeen, you're already pushing it about as far as it can go. Go talk to her."

"I—"

"I ain't havin' you start bleeding halfway up a mountain without anything on you!" he said. "Just—go!"

Vanna was about to just so that he would shut up about it, but she remembered that her pouch was full of other stuff, and there was no way she was gonna stuff some pads or tampons in there for them to accidentally fall out. "Where will I put them?"

He contorted his face. "Inside of you...?!"

" _I meant—!_ " She had to stop. She could not believe he seriously just said that. Vanna reached up and grabbed her hair on both sides of her head. "My pouch is full! Oh, my g _od!_ "

He let out a quiet "Oh" and stood there for a few seconds in silence. "Give me it," he said, holding his hand out.

Vanna questioningly raised an eyebrow, but handed over her pouch to him anyway. He opened the flap, peeked inside, and hummed. He slowly rubbed his fingers in circles along the bottom, then handed it back over to her after a few seconds of concentration. She looked inside, and all of her items were smaller, leaving plenty of room.

"The magic was aged and worn. Where did you get that thing from anyway?" Link said.

"It was the Hero's Shade's, too, I think. You know, the big undead knight. But, uh, thanks..."

"Welcome..." he said. Midna cleared her throat, and Link rolled his eyes back. "Meet me outside my house after... Well."

Vanna nodded, and walked into Sera's. She stuffed the items she gave her into the very bottom of her pouch, thanked her, and left. Link was just leaving his house as she got up to it. He climbed down the ladder, and hoisted himself up onto his giant of a horse. He scooted as far up on the saddle as he could, and motioned with his hand for Vanna to join him. She gave him a wary look.

"Just put your left foot on the stirrup, grab my hand, then pull yourself up and throw your right leg over," he said.

"You say that like it's easy for someone who's never gotten on a horse before," she muttered as she took his hand and placed her foot on the stirrup.

She tried to get herself up an embarrassing amount of times before Link wordlessly got off Epona, grabbed her by the ribs, and held her up like she weighed nothing. She grabbed onto the saddle and threw her right leg over, then settled down on it. Link got up slightly slower than he did the first time, being careful not to kick her as he did.

"Wrap your arms around me, or you'll fall off," he said.

Vanna wrapped her arms around him as he said, but it was awkward to do with his shield on his back. Link made a short noise, and Epona started to trot down the path to Faron.

"...So, how long will it take to get to our destination?" she asked.

"Should take us about five hours to get to Kakariko. It could take quite a while for us to scale the mountain, so we'll probably end up staying the night in the village and heading up in the morning. I don't think the Gorons would take too nicely to us sleepin' on their grounds."

Five hours on the back of a horse pushed up against a guy she barely knew with a spiteful girl hiding in their shadows, just so they could hike a mountain inhabited by powerful, hostile people that didn't want them to be there. How fun.

* * *

Riding Epona wasn't actually too bad, ignoring how uncomfortable it was to have both of them squished onto one saddle. Vanna loved finally getting out of Ordon and Faron Woods, and out into Hyrule Field. It was the largest stretch of unoccupied land she'd ever seen with her own eyes. She couldn't help but wonder why people would seclude themselves in tiny villages like Ordon when all of this land was out here. It'd be a beautiful place to have a home. She would have much preferred to look out her window and see acres and acres of green grass than to look out her window and see nothing but the outside of the twentieth floor of the bleak apartment complex across from hers. As much as she wanted to get home, part of her felt like she'd have trouble being happy going back to that tiny little apartment after what she saw that day.

It wasn't all rainbows and sunshine, though. Vanna finally got to see the twilight; it was creeping up on the field from the north, a yellow veil shooting from the ground and continuing high up into the sky. Many Bokoblins were aimlessly wandering, trying to attack whenever they got near. Epona was able to plow right through a number of them unscathed and unbothered, at least. There were also some other smaller enemies that Vanna couldn't get a good look at, with Epona trampling right over them, too. The only monster that proved to be a problem were ones that Link called Kargaroks—pretty much another name for giant _pterodactyls_. He swung his sword at those that came for them, while Vanna stayed as ducked down as she could possibly be.

They were nearing Kakariko Village when Vanna heard Link let out a deep growl. She assumed it was because of another pesky Kargarok, but when she peeked over his shoulder, she saw what looked like three giant boars, two with what looked like green Bokoblins riding them, and the third with a big fat green Bokoblin on it. They were clearly going to Kakariko Village. Link leaned forward, and Epona began to run faster while Vanna clung on to Link for dear life. As they rounded the corner into the village, they saw that the monsters had come to a stop, and the fat green Bokoblin was holding up a limp child. Another animalistic growl ripped forth from Link, and Epona sped up. Vanna lost her grip on Link as he leaned forward more, and she fell off the back of the horse.

All of the air was forced out of her lungs as she collided with the dirt. She heard Link shout that he was sorry, his voice gradually becoming lost along with the sound of racing hooves. She got to her knees and scrambled out of the way as quick as she could in case more Bokoblins would come down the path, the pain of her fall still reverberating within her.

"Are... Are you okay?" a wide-eyed young girl asked her. She was sitting on the ground, her right hand grasping her left arm. Vanna guessed from her clothes and round ears that she was Ordonian—she was Beth, then, the only little girl from the village.

Vanna knelt next to her. "I'm fine. What about you? Did you hurt your arm?"

She held it out. It was covered in dirt, but it didn't look to be bleeding. "I... I think I'm fine..."

A glint out of the corner of Vanna's eye brought her attention to a spring at the base of the village. "Why don't we clean it off in that spring over there so we can get a good look at it?"

Beth nodded, and Vanna helped her stand up. She was shaking as they slowly walked over to the spring. Vanna crouched down once their feet were about an inch into the water, and Beth followed her lead. She scooped some of the cold water into her hands and poured it on Beth's arm multiple times, revealing red scratches. Vanna gently used her wet hands to wipe away the remaining dirt, and poured water over the scratches again for good measure. She squinted her eyes as she stared at her arm.

"Is it just me..." Vanna said, "...or are your scratches fading away?"

Beth ran a finger along the scratches. "This is one of the Light Spirits' springs. The water has healing properties." She pouted and looked down the narrow village. "Link needs to save Colin quick and get some of this water on him... He has to be hurt... All because of me..."

"Hey now," Vanna said, rubbing her shoulder, "it's not your fault that bad guy took him away..."

Tears started to well up in her greenish-blue eyes. "Yes it is! I was standing in the way, he pushed me, and then they took him!"

"Well..." Vanna paused, thinking of a way to comfort her. "It doesn't really matter what happened, because Link is going to save him. And if Colin hadn't pushed you out of the way, and you were the one to be kidnapped, then Link would have saved you. There's nothing to worry about. Link will be back with Colin really soon, and they'll both be fine."

She seemed to think about it before nodding and wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands. "...Thanks," she said.

"No problem. You're Beth, right?"

"Mhmm. D-did Link tell you about me?" she asked, sounding and looking excited at the prospect.

"He brought up all of you kids, but none of you specifically. I was in Ordon for the past week or so, and I heard about you from your parents."

"Oh... Well, I heard about you from Link. Vanna, isn't it?" she said.

Vanna nodded, and for a second she felt similar to how Beth did when she thought Link told Vanna about her. She was curious what all he had said about her. She got the feeling it wasn't much, since he barely told her anything about anyone. Then again, he could have been a lot more talkative around the kids than he was around her.

Two boys walked up to them, and Vanna presumed them to be Talo and Malo, the nine-year-old and four-year-old sons of Jaggle and Pergie. Talo looked a bit short for a nine-year-old to Vanna—then again, the only Ordonian she met that was the size of the average American was Fado, who was a giant among the men of his village—but Malo looked like a _baby_. Not just in his round face, but overall. The purple bow on top of his head of brown hair didn't even come halfway up her thighs.

Beth introduced Vanna to the boys. The kids all seemed to still be in shock at the kidnapping of their friend, and none of them spoke much. They ended up sitting on a porch to wait for Link to come back with Colin, and a tall man and a girl slightly older than Beth came over to them from where they had been standing at the other end of the village. They looked Native American, and it looked like the girl was the man's daughter. She clung to his side, and she had tear stains running down her tan cheeks.

"How are all of you?" the man asked.

They responded with a chorus of " _okay_ "s and " _fine_ "s. The man ever-so-slightly smiled, and he looked at Vanna.

"You must be Vanna, correct?" he said. She nodded. "Thank you for watching over these children, Vanna. I was waiting near the northern entrance for Link to return with Colin so I could get the boy inside as quick as possible, but he's taking longer than I expected..." He looked down at the girl on his side. "This is my daughter, Luda, and I am Renado, the shaman of Kakariko Village."

They both bowed, and when they came back up, Vanna bowed her head to them and said it was nice to meet them. They led Vanna and the children up near the northern entrance, where they could tell earlier when Link was near. With every minute that passed, the kids became more and more worried. Their worries were both released and raised at the same time when Link finally rounded into the village on Epona with an unmoving Colin in his arms. Link handed Colin down to Renado, and the other children, save Luda, immediately started to bombard the man, asking if Colin was okay.

"Please, stay calm, for Colin's sake," Renado said. "Let me take him to the Elde Inn to assess him for injuries. I will let you all know soon how he is holding up."

The kids quieted, and Renado walked off toward one of the buildings along the side of the village. Luda followed behind him, Malo walked down to a small building at the end of the village, and Talo began to slowly pace the ground. Link hopped off Epona, and Beth flung her arms around him. He was shocked by the gesture at first, but then returned her hug.

"You're so brave, Link!" Beth said. "Do you think Colin is going to be okay?"

Link sighed. "We have to wait to hear from Renado."

* * *

The news didn't look very bright.

The Bullbo had trampled over Colin, breaking his left leg, and crushing down on his abdomen. Renado said it was impossible to tell the full extent of his abdominal injuries, but it was more than likely that Colin had internal bleeding and ruptured organs, and it was possible that his spine had been broken and he'd never walk again. He had administered all of the magical potions he could to the boy, but he wasn't sure if he could pull through.

Of course, Link and Vanna were the only ones he told his full findings to. Renado had given the children a much less intense description of Colin's injuries. While he didn't want to tell them flat out that their friend might not make it, he requested that they spend time with him, despite him being unconscious. It could have been their last chance to see him alive, after all. Vanna didn't want to intrude, so she sat outside of the room he was resting in while everyone else went in to see him. She heard quiet gasps after a while. She feared the worst, but then she heard a voice she hadn't heard yet.

"Is everyone ... okay? ...Good. Beth... I'm sorry. You know ... for shoving you. Are you ... mad?"

" _Colin,_ " she said, her voice shaking. "How could I be _mad_ at you? You saved my life..."

It was quiet for a few seconds before he spoke again. "I... I think I finally understand. I understand what my dad meant ... when he told me I needed to be stronger, like you, Link... He wasn't talking about strength, like lifting stuff... He was talking about being brave... Link... You saved me, didn't you? You... You can do anything. You can do something to help the Gorons in the mine too, can't you, Link?"

"I can," Link gently responded.

There was a moment of silence before more gasps came from within the room, but they sounded distressed this time. Renado asked for everyone to stay calm, and then assured them that Colin was merely sleeping. He said that the boy would need as much rest and as much peace as possible to recover, and he suggested that everyone else get some sleep, too.


	10. The Not-Dwarves' Mountain

Renado was standing at Colin's bedside when Vanna woke up. His eyes flicked over to her from Colin. "Good morning, Vanna," he said, as quiet as he could be without whispering.

"Morning, Renado," she said back just as quietly, kicking her legs off the bed she had slept in. She looked across the seven other beds in the room, finding that Renado was the only one not in his. Everyone else was still sleeping. "So, how's Colin?"

"His condition hasn't changed since last night."

"That's good, right?" she said. Renado raised an eyebrow. "Not _good_ ," she clarified, "but ... not really _bad_. He could be worse, is what I'm saying, so it's good that he's, y'know ... not dead."

He smiled and looked back down at Colin. "Yes, it is good that he's not dead. Still, I had hoped that him managing a full night's rest would mean that he would improve some..."

Vanna idly played with her fingers and pretended to be soaking in the details of the candle-lit wooden room. Renado didn't seem to be the type to keep up a conversation, or at least not while he was watching over a patient, so she was waiting for someone else to get up and break the silence.

"...It is four in the morning, you know," Renado said after a few minutes.

"It is?" she asked. She didn't really need to ask though, because it made sense when she thought about it. They had all went to bed at around eight the previous night, so it had already been eight hours, which was exactly how long she always slept.

"Yes, it is. Perhaps it'd be best if you tried to get more sleep. You've got a long day ahead of you, if you're to be scaling the mountain with Link."

"I've never been able to get more than eight hours sleep." She pulled her black boots on and got up. "If I'm not back before Link wakes up, can you tell him that I'm outside?"

Renado nodded, and Vanna left the Elde Inn. For the first time since getting to Hyrule, she was greeted by crisp air, and she crossed her arms for warmth. She supposed she should have suspected it; autumn was nearing after all, and she was no longer in the forest, but rather an arid region. She started to walk down the village, head tilted back, as part of what had become her morning routine over the last few days. She experienced yet another first—the sun had already started to rise during all of her previous morning walks, but the stars were still in the sky as she paced Kakariko. Vanna had never seen so many, and they made her feel a twinge of jealousy in her heart. She wanted to take Hyrule's sky back home with her.

Her morning walks in Ordon always led her to the Hero's Shade, but she didn't have anyone or anything to go to in Kakariko, so she continually walked up and down the narrow village before she grew bored of walking and stopped to pet Epona. She plopped down on the side of the dirt road after a while and rested her head back against one of the boarded-up buildings. She tried to find any familiar constellations in the sky.

As the stars were beginning to fade away, Vanna heard the door to the Elde Inn open and close. When she looked over, Malo was walking down the steps of the wooden porch. He started to walk down the village, not even sparing her a glance.

"Hey, Malo," she said as he got to the point in the road that she was at. "Where're you going?"

He stopped in his tracks, and his green eyes shot over to her. If looks could kill... "To the store." He walked off without another word.

Vanna watched as he went inside a building at the end of the village, and then she stood. If he was awake, then maybe other people were up, too. She walked back inside the hotel, and the smell of eggs wafted to her. She followed the scent into the kitchen, where she found Luda. She offered her breakfast, which they ate together. Beth and Talo joined them in the middle of their meal, and after they were all done they hung out in the main lobby. Link was the last one to come down, at eight in the morning.

"Have a nice _twelve hour_ sleep?" Vanna asked as he walked down the stairs.

Apparently he didn't sense the disparagement in her voice, because he responded with a sincere nod. Link scarfed down the cold leftovers from breakfast and cleaned his dishes before he spoke to Vanna. "Let's go."

The children wished them luck, and they walked out. Link raised his pointer finger and ran over to Epona. He gave her some food he had stored in his pouch and stroked her with one hand as she ate out of the other. Midna came out of Vanna's shadow and stretched.

"Have you been in my shadow this whole time?" Vanna asked.

"What did I tell you?" Midna responded.

She rolled her eyes. " _My shadow's comfier than Link's._ But you haven't said anything all day. That doesn't seem like you."

"Because you were with the kids when I woke up, and I don't want anyone to know about me." Midna looked over at Link and narrowed her one uncovered eye at him. "Come on, Link!"

Link patted Epona and jogged over to them. Midna dove down into Vanna's shadow, and Link and Vanna set off up Kakariko. They followed the left trail as they got to a fork in the path. Vanna yet again found herself wanting to stay behind when they came upon a tall cliff face. It had metal fencing going all the way up it, at least, but it went up so high. She walked up to it faster than Link so that she could at least get a head start. He caught up to her by the time she was at the top of the cliff face, and they pulled themselves up and over at the same time.

As Vanna had pondered earlier in the day what their journey up the mountain would entail, she thought about what the Gorons would be like, and she had come to the conclusion that they would probably be Hyrule's version of Dwarves, much like how Hylians were Hyrule's version of Elves. They supposedly were strong, mountain-dwelling people who mined, which matched up perfectly with her idea of Dwarves.

So needless to say, she was very much surprised when she did not see a stocky, hairy man, and instead saw a _boulder_ with stumpy legs, long and muscular arms, and a fat head atop its shoulders with big round eyes.

"Ho! You are back again with a friend this time, human? You will never pass! Even two humans cannot hope to match our brute force!" it yelled.

It dropped down and curled itself up into a ball, and started to spin in place, like how characters used to run without moving on old TV shows. Link ran ahead some, dropped the iron boots down in front of him, and hopped into them. He bent his knees with his feet apart, and held his arms out.

"Stay behind me and to my left!" he yelled.

Vanna got to where he wanted her to be before the Not-Dwarf shot itself forward, dirt clouds puffing up behind it as it rolled down the incline toward Link. She couldn't hold back a gasp as the living boulder rolled straight into Link's arms. Link yelled as he turned himself and threw the Goron right off the cliff. It continued to roll down the path into the village, screaming all the while. Link brushed his hands together in satisfaction. He gave Vanna a concerned look when he turned his head to her. Her shock must have been more evident on her face than she thought.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

"I thought Gorons were people!" she said.

"They are people!"

"No they're not! They're fucking _rocks!_ "

"They're rock people! You already knew that they were made of rocks. Bo said they were when we were in his house."

"I thought it was just a figure of speech! I didn't think he actually _meant_ it!"

* * *

Vanna stayed a bit behind Link as they followed the mountain trail, and neither of them nor Midna said anything for hours—or, if Link or Midna said anything, Vanna didn't hear it, because she was listening to music the whole time. Numerous Gorons spotted them from their perches upon the tops of the high walls of the mountain, and rolled down at them, but Link flung them all down the trail. After several hours of hiking up the mountain with only a few seconds-long breaks to catch their breath, Vanna got the feeling that they were finally close to the mines. They were no longer on a narrow trail, and more Gorons were up on the multitude of cliffs jutting out of the mountainside.

She hated climbing the grated cliff way back at the beginning of the trail, but she would have preferred that over what seemed to be the only way up these cliffs. One Goron hopped onto the back of a rolled-up Goron, and as the one being stood on unrolled itself, the other one shot up into the air. It landed on a higher cliff, and then went through an entryway into the mountain. Vanna got her phone out and finally turned off her music, figuring that she'd have to cooperate with Link to get the Gorons to curl up for them so they could get up to that entryway. She realized that she had a text from her mom that she didn't notice earlier.

Vanna's mom had sent her countless texts saying _Are you okay?_ or _How are you?_ since she learned that Zi was able to text her. Vanna had asked her, and everyone else she knew, for that matter, to not text her those things so much, but she knew that was a hefty request for a worrying mother. She started to send her back a text, telling her that she was okay, and asking if she would keep from texting her at all that day because she'd be busy, even though it pained her to not be able to talk to her. Just as she sent it, Link slammed into her, and they fell over. A _ginormous_ , red-hot rock had fallen right where Vanna had been standing, and smaller—but still decently sized—rocks started to rain down on the area after it. A normal mountain wasn't bad enough, _no_ , they were going to have to go inside a _volcano_.

"Whoa, that was dangerous! Is this the traditional Death Mountain welcome?" Midna said, coming out of Vanna's shadow.

She giggled, but Vanna couldn't tell whether it was because of her own ' _joke_ ' or because she noticed that Link was still on her. He got off her, and as she pushed herself up, she grumbled under her breath that he should have let it hit her.

"Why are you in such a bad mood?" Link asked, her sour attitude clearly having rubbed off on him.

Vanna groaned—they just hiked up a mountain for hours upon hours so that they could go inside of an erupting volcano and he was really wondering that? "I'm in a bad mood because _I want to go home!_ "

"So do I!"

" _Your_ home isn't in a _different universe!_ Nothing's stopping you from going back to Ordon! _Nothing!_ "

" _Everything_ is stopping me from going back to Ordon!"

"Maybe you two should knock it off for now," Midna interrupted, "because that Goron just noticed you and he's coming over to fight."

Link and Vanna both looked to where Midna's finger was pointing. A Goron was stomping his way over to them, large fists at the ready. Link drew his sword and shield and met the Goron halfway. Vanna scoffed at the thought of Link's wooden shield holding up to the fist of that thing, but it blocked the Goron's punch with no problem, and the Goron went stumbling back. Link slashed his sword at the animated boulder, and though it didn't look to physically harm it, the Goron curled up into a ball in what Vanna assumed to be a defense mechanism. She climbed up onto the Goron, and Link gave her a ' _What the hell are you doing?_ ' look before it uncurled itself and sent her catapulting up into the air. A little squeal escaped her before she landed, and then she let out a sigh of relief. She peered down over the cliff at Link, wondering if she should wait for him.

She decided not to. Vanna drew her sword and shield and approached a Goron that could get her up the next cliff, intending to repeat what Link had done. She thought that she would have an even easier time than Link—her shield was metal, and her sword looked better than his—but there was something she didn't account for. Just because her _shield_ could take a Goron's punch better than Link's shield, didn't mean _she_ could. When the Goron punched her raised shield, the force of the blow ended up making her get hit in the face by her own arm and fall backward. As her head collided with the solid ground, her vision flickered to static for a second. She blinked rapidly as she rushed to her feet, her head swirling. She broadly swung her sword at the Goron and landed a hit, and he curled up. The remaining effects of her collision with the ground faded away as she climbed the Goron's back and got shot up to the next cliff.

Vanna continued using the Gorons to get up the mountain, and she only stopped to look back for Link once she got up to the entryway. She couldn't even see him anymore. Again, she decided to go forth without him, and she walked into the hole in the mountain's wall. It started out as not much but a dark tunnel, but when she walked farther into it, she saw that it broadened into a lantern-lit room filled with Gorons. She looked behind herself once, but Link still hadn't caught up to her. She drew her sword and walked into the room.

All of the Gorons promptly noticed her, and they did that thing where they curled up and rolled without actually moving forward. Vanna took a step back and turned her body slightly, ready to book it out of there if they didn't stop. At once, they all started to roll toward her, and right before she was about to turn herself the rest of the way around and run, a deep voice called into the room.

" _Enough!_ "

The Gorons stopped immediately. They stood up and looked toward another narrow tunnel that led into the room, where a Goron slowly walked in. He was much smaller than the others, although still big, and looked to be older than them.

"Is this young one such an imposing enemy that you must all gang up on her? I think not, Little Brothers," the Goron said. He stopped, put his hands on his hips, and smiled. "Come here!"

Vanna eyed the other Gorons distrustfully as she heeded the command of the old Goron. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs that he stood atop, feeling the stares of all of the Gorons on her.

"I am a Goron elder, little human. I am called Gor Coron."

She nodded, unsure of how to show proper respect to Gorons upon meeting them. "I am a ... _little human_ , and I'm called Vanna."

Gor Coron nodded back. "Because of certain ... circumstances, I must lead the Goron tribe in place of Darbus, our tribal patriarch. Tell me, little human, do you come from the village below?"

"Um, well, I'm not _from_ there, but I got up here from there," she said. "I need to get into the mines, so could you maybe direct me there? Please?"

"You have done well to come this far. You are strong ... for a human. However..." He crossed his arms. "The mines beyond here are sacred to my tribe. Outsiders are not allowed in. Unless..."

' _Shit_.' She knew what he was going to say, and she didn't like it.

He smiled again. "I could make an exception ... but you would have to beat me in a contest of power. Are you willing to try that, little human?"

Vanna heard gentle footsteps come into the room just in time. She could have sighed in relief, but she knew there was a chance it was too early for that. "If my friend here beats you in a contest of power, would you let both of us into the mines?"

Gor Coron looked right over her head, and tapped his fingers on his arms. With a stiff nod, he started down the steps. Vanna let out that sigh of relief and moved out of the way, and turned to look at Link. She thought he would be mad at her for volunteering him to fight in her stead— _she_ surely would have been mad if the situation were reversed—but he slipped his feet into the iron boots in preparation for his fight without any complaint.

Vanna guessed it made sense that Gorons were rocks, because they were just about as dumb as them. Not one said anything about Link's boots, though it was painfully obvious just by looking at them that they made him harder to push around. The boots created a loud bang with each laborious step Link took to get up onto the arena.

The fight ended much earlier than she expected it to, with Link as the winner. Though she didn't count the seconds of any of Link's three sumo matches that she'd seen, Vanna was certain that he beat Gor Coron faster than he managed to beat Mayor Bo. It really wasn't _too_ surprising, given how slow the Goron moved and how old he appeared to be, but she thought it would be at least a little more intense.

Gor Coron rose to his feet, a smile on his face. He congratulated Link on his victory, and told them the story of the Gorons' patriarch. Darbus had touched a treasure inside the mountain while he and the four Goron elders were investigating the mountain's non-stop eruptions, and he transformed into a monster. When he began to wreak havoc, the elders had no choice but to seal him deep inside of the mountain. Vanna quickly put two and two together—Darbus was Fyrus, and it was the power of a Fused Shadow that turned him into a monster.

"I ask this favor of you, young warriors," Gor Coron said. "Go to the aid of Darbus! Make no mistake, the spirits have guided you two here. I, Gor Coron, need your help... On behalf of my entire clan, I ask for your aid!"

Vanna felt bad as she agreed, because Gor Coron didn't know what was coming for Darbus. She was almost 100% certain that they would have no choice but to kill him. They _needed_ that Fused Shadow, so that she could go home. She tried to reassure herself that she wasn't being entirely selfish; it would be better for Darbus to just put him out of his misery rather than letting him stay a monster. Still, she would feel bad about killing him, knowing that he had been a ... ' _person,_ ' at some point. At least Diababa was probably only a Deku Baba or Baba Serpent before it got corrupted by the Fused Shadow.

Gor Coron instructed the two Gorons guarding the tunnel he had walked in from to let them pass. Vanna walked in first, hearing Link's heavy footsteps a ways behind her. The farther she got into the tunnel, the hotter it became. By the time she walked out of the tunnel and into the mines, the temperature was almost unbearable, and she didn't have to walk too far into the mines to see the cause—a river of magma flowed down the center of the long room. She let out a sigh and maneuvered around to get her cropped overshirt off without having to take off her baldric. This was going to be miserable.


	11. Heat

It made Vanna feel good, in the worst way, to see that Link couldn't handle the heat as well as she could.

He had them take a lunch break as soon as he got into the mines, during which time he chugged down an entire canteen filled with water that Luda had given him. He restrained himself from drinking any more out of the other canteen he had, despite how much he was itching to. As Vanna sipped the water from the first of her two canteens, Link gave her a worried look.

"...You should drink more," he said, his voice slightly quiet. "You have to be dehydrated."

"If one of us is dehydrated, it's clearly you, judging by how much you've drunk. Not that I want you to pass out from dehydration or anything, but you really should have drunk less. God knows how long we'll be in here, and you've finished half your water supply before we even started anything," she said.

"You're not even _sweating_."

"Women don't sweat as much as men," she said with a shrug.

Link made a noise of displeasure before removing his belt and his baldric. Before Vanna could ask what he was doing, he took off his green tunic and chain mail, his long pointy hat falling off in the process. A very unpleasant smell drifted over to her as he lifted his arms, making her scrunch her nose up and scoot backward. He had never smelled the best to her, but he _really_ didn't smell good now. His current odor was entirely repulsive, unlike his old earthy scent of trees and dirt with a tinge of what Vanna could now identify as goat manure.

He placed his shirts in his pouch, seemingly unaffected by his own stench. He then strapped his baldric over his undershirt that was absolutely drenched in sweat around his neck and armpits, and buckled his belt around his hips. Link picked up his hat from behind him and put it back on his head, then stood up and put his canteens away.

"Have fun with your impending heat stroke because of that stupid hat," Vanna said as she got up.

He reached up to touch his hat and frowned, looking hurt. "My hat ain't stupid... I can handle feeling a little warmer if it means feeling a lot more at ease. I've gotten so used wearin' my hat that I feel weird without it."

"Your hat is definitely stupid."

Link glared at her and started down what little of the path there was before the magma lake, grumbling " _My hat is_ not _stupid_ " under his breath. She laughed quietly as she followed him, and he glared back at her again.

"What's so funny back there?"

"What's funny is you getting worked up over a _hat_ ," she said.

He stopped walking and turned to face her. "This ain't just _any_ ole hat. This hat was given to me by a _Light Spirit_ , and it was once worn by an ancient hero who saved Hyrule."

" _Any ole hat_ or not, you _have_ to admit it looks funny."

"You've got no room to be talking about my hat when you wear a shirt that doesn't even go past your ribs. Don't you know that shirts are supposed to cover your _entire_ torso?"

"Says the one who wears a shirt so long it's practically a dress."

"It's called a _tunic_."

"And my shirt is called a _crop top_."

Link rolled his eyes and let out a long breath through his nose. "Okay, I'm done with discussing _clothes_ inside a _volcano_. I just want to go find Darbus, get the Fused Shadow, and get out of here before I melt."

"Fine."

With that word, the quiet returned.

Vanna always hated the quiet. Having only the sound of the magma lake bubbling over top of the constant electric hum produced by her hearing aids was maddening, but it wasn't like she could get her phone out and start listening to music. They had to hop over dangerous chasms and avoid geysers of magma to make it to the end of the sweltering room. One second of distraction was all it would take for her to make a wrong step and fall to her death.

They were out of the long room after several of the most stressful moments of Vanna's life, and outside into what she supposed was the main area of the mines. Large and stationary metal cranes hung over platforms that rose out of the lava, and metal ramps and gratings were connected to form entrances to different rooms back inside. They took the only path they could take from where they were, ending up in a room with more magma geysers and chasms, and...

"Since when do _alligators_ live inside of volcanoes?" she said.

"You talkin' about the Dodongo? They've always lived in the volcano regions," Link said.

Alligator or not, it was actually a strangely comforting sight in a way. In the midst of this unfamiliar world, at least there was something else that her world had, too, even if that something was slightly different with its purple gecko-like toes and orange tail.

"Don't jump down here until I tell you to," Link said. "Those things are really dangerous. Just let me take care of it."

"You're a goat wrangler, not a ' _Dodongo_ ' wrangler. Do you _want_ to get eaten?"

Link looked at Vanna like she had just said the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard. "I ain't gonna wrangle it, I'm gonna kill it!"

Vanna stared in disbelief as he hopped down and ran over to the Dodongo, sword and shield at the ready. The Dodongo opened its mouth wide and she cringed away, thinking it was about to lunge forward and bite Link. Instead, Link jumped over to the side just as fire began to erupt from its mouth.

"The alligators breathe fire," she whispered to herself. "They. Breathe. _Fire?_ "

The Dodongo was even more dangerous than she thought—and Link was even stupider than she thought.

"Get _away_ from that thing!" she yelled.

"I've got it, calm down!" Link yelled back.

He jumped to the side again as the Dodongo sent another stream of flames his way. Link raced around to its back and slashed his sword down at its orange tail repeatedly. It exploded into nothing after a good ten slashes at its tail, just like the Deku Babas and Skulltulas and Bokoblins did.

"...Link?" Vanna said.

He looked up at her. "Hm?"

She jumped down and walked over to him. "How can you tell what creatures are evil and what creatures aren't?"

Link raised an eyebrow. "Evil creatures want to kill you."

"I know that already. How do you know _which_ creatures want to kill you?"

"Well, typically the ones who want to kill you will try to kill you."

Vanna huffed, and he smiled a bit. He walked up to the edge of the rock platform they were standing on, and motioned with his hand for her to come with him as he jumped over onto another. She followed him, hopping from rock to rock until they got to the other side of the large platform. There was a big metal chain attached to a concrete slab that went through the middle part of the platform that was sectioned off by two walls.

"Let me put it this way," she said. "How do you know that Dodongos are evil when other animals like goats _aren't_ evil? Don't answer something stupid like ' _Goats won't try to kill you_.' There has to be some other way you know."

Link shrugged. "I've read a lot of books that have monsters in them, so I recognize them from those. I'll tell you about the monsters we see when we see them, okay?" She nodded. "Just remember that it's best for you to be careful around anything that isn't a person."

"I don't know what classifies a person as a person here either, though," she said, frowning. "If you hadn't told me Gorons were people, I wouldn't have considered them to be. In my world, the only people are other humans like me."

"Hyrule has humans like you, Hylians like me, and Gorons, Zoras, Fairies... We used to have a few more kinds of people, but those are the only ones left, that I know of at least. Zoras are fish people, and Fairies are these tiny little people who fly around with wings. You'll know what I mean if you see them."

She was about to tell him that she knew what Fairies were even though they were nothing more than fiction in her world, but she didn't want their conversation to go there. "Why would fish people be considered people more than Bokoblins, though? Bokoblins just look like a really ugly green or purple mix between Hylians and apes. I know that they're evil, but why does that negate their personhood? I'm sure Hylians and humans have kidnapped kids before, just like how that big Bokoblin kidnapped Colin."

"The green guys aren't Bokoblins. They're Bulblins. There's a difference, and not just in their skin color. Look closer next time you see one." Link picked up the chain and turned it over in his hands. "And yeah, I'm sure there are Hylians that do evil things, too, but Hylians aren't inherently evil like Bokoblins and Bulblins are. We're the chosen people of the Goddesses, we weren't born of evil." He paused and looked at her. "Was there another path we could have taken?"

"No, this was the only way. Give me that." She grabbed the chain's handle from him and tugged on it, making the slab pull out of the wall the tiniest bit. "The exit from this room has to be hidden behind that slab. We need to pull it out as far as we can."

Link took hold of the other side of the handle, and together they pulled it back, the slab sliding out along with it. When it got to the point where they could pull it out no farther, they dropped the chain, and as soon as they did the slab began to slowly slide back. They exchanged a quick glance of confirmation, their eyes saying the word that their mouths didn't— _run_.

They just barely made it within the short window of time they had, the slab blocking them off from the rest of the room just seconds after they got past it. Just like Vanna suspected, there was a door right in front of them, another one of the weird round rolling doors that seemed to be the standard in temples. Unlike the rock doors in the Forest Temple, these were made of wood, with a metal decal in the middle and metal around the rims.

"Kinda dumb to have wooden doors in here, don't you think?" she said. "It's like the torches inside of the Forest Temple. Is it not common knowledge in Hyrule that fire and wood don't mix?"

Link narrowed his eyes at her, still trying to catch his breath from their dash over here. "Just because our world may not be as ' _advanced_ ' as yours is doesn't mean we're _stupid_."

"You've been carrying around a wooden shield inside of a volcano that has fire-breathing creatures."

She could practically see the ' _Oh, right. Huh_ ,' look on his face. "I know it's not _ideal_ ," he said, "but I need a shield, and it's all I got."

Vanna pulled hers off her baldric and held it over to him. "Take mine. You're the one that wants to fight. You need it more than me."

"But you—"

" _Take it_ ," she said. It should have been his in the first place anyway; it belonged to his great-great-grandfather, not hers.

With a sigh, Link dropped his wooden shield into his pouch, and attached the metal one to his baldric. He looked more of a hero with his ancestor's shield on his back, more _right_. Vanna remembered how his birthmark matched the yellow design on the shield, like it was made for him to hold. ...But how did his great-great-grandfather know, in his youth when that shield belonged to him, that his great-great-grandson would someday wield the shield and be born with that same mark?

Link placed both his hands on the wooden door, and before he opened it, he looked back at her and said, "So you know—I don't _want_ to fight."

She nearly snorted. Sure looked like he wanted to fight when he hopped right on down to fight that Dodongo.

The room the door led to was much smaller, and much cooler, with no magma inside. Instead, there was a pool of water with a metal fence halfway through it. There were two floors in one, with a higher door and a lower door in sight, but they both looked impossible to get to, both too high up.

Midna emerged from Vanna's shadow. "That's weird. This place is pretty cool. Good place to take a bath?"

"You could use one," Vanna said to Link.

Midna giggled at her comment. Link looked like he took offense to it until he sniffed. His expression was a mix of surprise, disgust, and embarrassment.

"Sorry," he said. "Didn't know I smelled that bad."

Link jumped into the water and submerged himself in it. When he came back up, he took his hat off and shook out his hair, little droplets of water flinging out.

"What are you, a dog?!" Vanna said as she backed up.

"Oh, aren't you in for a surprise," Midna said.

Link shot her a look, then looked at Vanna. "Get in. It's real nice." He drank some of the water and hummed in delight. "Tastes good, too."

Vanna scrunched up her face. "Ew! Swimming in it's one thing, but why would you _drink_ it?"

"Um, I'm thirsty?"

"Who _knows_ what's in that water? That's disgusting!"

"Too thirsty to care," he said, taking another big gulp. "Come on and get in."

She walked closer to the edge, and peered down into the water. The pool was probably between ten and fifteen feet deep. There was a hole big enough for a person to get through at the bottom of the fence, and just beyond it was a switch on the ground. She guessed that it would raise some platform that would take them up to the strange, flickering blue overhang that led to the lower door.

"I don't know if..." she trailed off.

"What, can't swim?" Link teased, an amused look on his face.

His look faded as he saw hers.

"I-it's not, it's not that I..." Vanna staggered. Her cheeks were as hot as the magma. "I _can_ swim. I just—not underwater. I'm fine on the surface, kinda. But we have to go through that hole," she pointed, "at the bottom of the fence to get to the other side, and I..."

Link looked behind him. "Swim up to the fence, and climb over?" he suggested.

She wasn't good at climbing, either, but at least she knew that it was something she could actually do. "Y-yeah, I can do that."

"Meet you on the other side," Link said.

He dove down, and Vanna watched as he swam deeper and deeper. He came up on the other side of the fence and shook his hair out again, then looked over to her as he put his hat back on. She was still standing in the same place.

"Right," she whispered to herself.

Rather than jumping in, she lowered herself into the unexpectedly chilled water. She slowly made her way over to the fence, and grabbed onto the metal and pulled herself up out of the water. She stopped for a second at the top, her legs straddling either side, thinking about how to maneuver herself and climb down. Her hands gripped the beam on the top of the fence so hard she was sure the rivets would leave dents in her skin. She carefully pulled her left leg over to the other side, then slotted her foot into a hole. She went to move her right foot down.

It slipped. She lost her grip on the top of the fence, and went falling backward. She could only let out a short scream before her body was completely under the water.

Vanna wildly flung her arms and kicked her legs up and down. She freaked out so much trying to get herself to the surface that she didn't even close her mouth or plug her nose, so when her head finally came up, water was pouring out of her mouth and nose. An arm wrapped around her waist, preventing her from going back down again.

"Are you okay?" Link asked.

She rubbed the water out of her eyes and blinked them open. Link was in front of her, one of his arms floating on the surface of the water, and his legs kicking underneath to keep them both up. She spit out what water remained in her mouth and wiped at her nose as she nodded.

"You were really thrashing around," he said. "I thought you were gonna make yourself drown."

She moved his arm off her and pushed away so that she could kick her own legs. "No," Vanna said, though she wasn't sure what she was saying it to—she _was_ thrashing around, and she thought she was going to drown, too. "I can swim, see? I just needed to calm down. I'm sure you would have been scared if you suddenly fell that far down, too."

"So, you're fine now?" he asked. She nodded. "You're not going to drown?" She nodded again. "Okay, good. Follow me up above the switch over there."

They swam over, and she could tell he was going slower so that she could keep up. They stopped above the switch, and Link reached into his pouch. He brought his iron boots out and slipped them onto his feet, and he started to sink down immediately. Vanna was horrified watching him go down, imagining herself in his spot, though he looked calm as ever.

The ground didn't rise when Link sunk onto the switch, like she thought it would. The door didn't lower either, like her second guess. Instead, a shining ring of blue light erupted from the ground to the overhang of the flickering blue floor above them, and they went flying up to it. Vanna hit the floor with a bang, immediately becoming disoriented. They were upside-down. Her whole body felt like it was buzzing with electricity.

Link looked down at her—up at her?—and she could tell he was just as confused and disoriented as she was. "How are you sticking?"

"How are _you_ sticking?" she shot back.

"This floor must be magnetic. My boots are sticking. But you..."

But she wasn't wearing iron boots.

Vanna sat up, becoming even more disoriented as she noticed her wet hair was hanging above her head instead of down her back. She slowly stood, feeling like her body was trying to hold her against the magnet. She looked at her feet when she was all the way up. Like Link's, they were the only thing keeping her from falling down into the water, down where gravity should have made her be.

"Do your boots have metal in them?" Link asked.

"No, they don't. Nothing that I'm wearing has any—" Vanna stopped herself as she realized that while her whole body felt like it was being tugged down, or up, something at her hips and torso was tugging with more vigor. She reached for her gun, and as soon as she grabbed it, the buzzing sensation multiplied in her hands, and she could feel it trying to bring itself to the magnetic ground. Though she didn't pull it out, she was certain that what was tugging down on her torso was her sword attempting to pull away from her baldric to meet the magnet. "My gun and my sword must be enough to keep all of me up here with them."

"Better make sure you don't drop them, then, if they're what's keepin' you up here."

She looked up/down at the water, holstering her gun but keeping her hand firmly over it. She gulped. "Yeah."

Vanna wasted no time walking forward and over the edge of the overhang, and Link followed her lead. Her feelings of being disoriented washed away when they were no longer upside-down. The buzzing feeling she felt washed away too, along with the pull of her gun and sword, as she stepped off the magnetized blue floor onto normal earth. The lower of the two previously unreachable doors was before them, and their boots squeaked as they walked over to it.

Inside the room was what looked to be another sumo ring, with an elderly Goron standing on the middle of it. He was by far the smallest Goron she'd seen, his narrow eyes even with her belly button, and he held a walking stick in his left hand. Even though he was holding the walking stick and standing in one place, he was still wobbling uncontrollably as he tried to keep his balance. Vanna's eyes flicked back and forth between his long rock beard, and the miniature smoking volcano that was the top of his head.

"Ah... I thought I felt a presence ... but what a surprise to find young humans," the old Goron said in his deep, shaking voice. "Word has come to me of you ... and if Gor Coron has faith in you, then your hearts must be true. I am one of the four Goron elders. Gor Amoto is my name. You are heroic, young humans. Please, you must lend this tribe your power. Take the key shard I've left for you on the table over there, and the map with it."

Vanna looked over to where his eyes did, spotting the key shard he spoke of on a small table. She went over to it and picked up the big blue and gold hunk, and the yellowed map of the mines.

"When merged with the other key shards, you'll be able to get inside the room where our patriarch, Darbus, is being held," Gor Amoto said. "Each of us three elders keeps a piece. You must hurry to the other elders!" He wagged his cane, but quickly put it back down when he nearly toppled over.

She put the key shard in her pouch and looked at the map. It didn't seem like it would be too difficult to get to Darbus. There were only two floors, and they had already been through all of the first one. The second looked a bit more complicated, but she figured the lines on the map would be easier to decipher when they actually got to the rooms they represented, if they even would need the map at all. She folded up the map and put it in her pouch next to the key shard.

She thanked Gor Amoto for the map and the shard, and then climbed up the ladder to the upper half of the room. A high-pitched clucking noise brought her attention to a collection of pottery, and she saw something poking out of one of the pots.

"Ooccoo?" she said.

Vanna walked around to the pot and picked it up. She flipped it over, and Ooccoo fell out of it. She stood up and shook out her feathers.

She looked just as weird the second time meeting her as she had the first.

"Gracious, you're that nice girl who helped me out the other day! How nice to see you again!" Ooccoo said.

"Yeah... So, uh, find your son?" Vanna asked.

"Why, yes I did! Let me introduce you! Ooccoo Jr.!"

The pot next to the one she had been in stirred, and then out came a baby-sized disembodied head with cracked yellow skin, beady pink eyes, and wings where its ears should have been. The wings flapped up and down so fast they blurred as Ooccoo Jr. flew up to Vanna and stared her dead in the face with his creepy blank expression. She heard Link walk up behind her and make a quiet exclamation of shock at the sight of him. Vanna was sure that Ooccoo Jr. would feature in her nightmares if she ever had them.

"He can warp you out of here, and then right back to wherever you left me," Ooccoo said. "Just let me know if you want to warp out—he's a very shy boy, goodness, yes! May we stash away in your pouch, Link?"

Link opened his pouch, and Ooccoo and her son flew into it. Vanna was very happy in that moment that Ooccoo's kind were just as strange to Link as they were to her, so that she could at least look at him and know she wasn't alone with her creeped-out feelings.


	12. Stupid Hat

They left Gor Amoto's room from the highest door, bringing them to the upper level of the room with the water. There was another door across from them, above the one they originally came in from. The only way to get to it was to walk sideways along the blue magnetic walls. Pulsing, flaming monsters crawled along them. Link told Vanna that they were called Torch Slugs, and that they were one of the weakest monsters out there. He put his iron boots back on and they stepped onto the magnet walls, and she let him take care of the things. She was too scared of accidentally dropping her sword down into the water below.

Link and Vanna came back out in the room that had the Dodongo in it, on a ledge they couldn't reach before. Vanna stopped and pulled out the map. Something was wrong.

"Look at the map of the second floor, Link," she said. "We're on it right now, but this room looks nothing like it does on the map. There're all these paths and dead ends and a door on there, but none of it matches up."

Midna came out of her shadow and looked at the map. "It _does_ match up."

"No, it doesn't," Link said. "All there is of the second floor in this room is what we're standin' on right now. It doesn't match up at all. Should we go back to Gor Amoto?"

"No, you two should _look up_ ," Midna said.

They looked up at the ceiling. It was shimmering blue, with normal rocks outlining an array of paths. Vanna looked back and forth at the ceiling and the map.

"...It all matches up," she confirmed.

"Exactly like I said. What would you two do without me?"

"We probably would'a stepped on that switch over there and found out about the ceiling ourselves," Link said, pointing forward.

"Well, I'm glad we didn't have to find out the hard way that that's one of those activating switches," Vanna said. "At least we can be prepared for it shooting us up to the ceiling now..."

It turned out that knowing ahead of time that it was going to make them fly up to the ceiling didn't make it any more pleasant. Once again, Link's boots allowed him to land on his feet, while Vanna smacked up against the ceiling on her back. It was even worse this time, since the ceiling was so much higher up than the overhang was in the last room. She groaned as she struggled to get to her feet, her sword and gun trying to hold her to the magnet.

The map quickly became a hundred times more confusing hanging upside-down from the ceiling. She couldn't tell as easily which path lined up with which path on the map like she could when they were viewing them from below. They accidentally took a path that led them down to one of the dead ends first, which was a pretty big setback considering how much ceiling there was and how painfully slow Link's iron boots made him walk. Vanna's anxiety levels got higher and higher each extra second they were up there. She tried her hardest to pretend that they weren't upside-down, but it was hard to lie to herself when their hair and Link's hat was falling the wrong way.

"...Link?" she said.

"Hm?"

"...How does your hat not fall off when you're upside-down?"

"...I have no idea."

The correct path brought them down to an alcove with a wooden door, that led back outside to the main area of the mines. They followed a metal grated path down to the ginormous base of one of the cranes, and Vanna noticed that the bottom of the cranes were magnetic. She instantly got a bad feeling.

Three Bulblins ran around from the other side of the base, clubs at the ready. Now that she really looked at the green things, she realized that there actually were differences between them and the purple Bokoblins they saw in the Forest Temple. The Bulblins had glowing red eyes, they wore a full getup unlike the Bokoblins who simply wore loose pants and shoes, and they didn't look like ugly old man-apes, though they were still ugly. Vanna put her left arm out to stop Link from meeting them halfway with his sword, and she shot each of them.

She smiled triumphantly as she holstered her gun. "And the Hero's Shade said my gun wouldn't help me here. I'd like to see a swordsman try to kill enemies that fast."

"I'm sure he could," Link said. "He's really somethin' else."

They combined their weight on a nearby switch, activating the crane's magnet and making it swivel around. It stopped above three separate docks—one where they first came into the main area, another connected to where they were, and another on the other side of the volcano. The magnet deactivated for a few seconds above each dock.

Vanna didn't realize that Midna had come out of her shadow until she heard her say, "Doesn't _that_ look fun?"

* * *

It wasn't.

In fact, Vanna would have preferred to hike up Death Mountain five more times over hitching a ride on those cranes. By the time they were dropped off at the final dock, she was wondering how she didn't have irreversible brain damage from being slammed onto the cranes and onto the docks every time.

At least the room they walked into was another cool room, though the presence of water and gigantic water striders did take some of the sweet relief away from her. The Tektites, as Link called them, hopped on the water on their way over to them, making it hard to get the timing right for Vanna to shoot them. Link ended up killing them all with his sword before diving into the water. He drank the water again, and again she told him off for it—she might have been overly cautious in the last room, but there was no way the water in this room wasn't contaminated from the Tektites. He shrugged it off, and to make a point that he didn't care, he filled up both of his canteens with the water.

Vanna noticed something light in her peripheral vision, and when she searched for what it was, she saw a silver key down at the bottom of the water. "How about you stop drinking that nasty water and go get the key down there?"

Link dove down to get it, and as he did, she started to hop over the stepping stones to get to a large closed gate at the other side of the room. She saw two Bulblins past the gate, guarding spinning metal contraptions that looked like wardrobes.

"Van—oh, there you are," Link said. She looked back to see him swimming over to her. "Thank Hylia you noticed that key. I never would have. We'd've been stuck in here forever."

"Maybe you could have if you would wear your glasses," Vanna said. He gave her a confused look, and that's when she remembered that he had never told her he wore glasses. "Saw them in your house," she said before he could ask.

Link climbed out of the water and brought the key up to the gate, only for them both to find out that there was no keyhole. He dropped the key into his pouch and then wedged his fingers into the narrow gap between the sides of the gate so he could try to pull it open himself, but his attempts were in vain. Rather than just watching his pitiful attempts, Vanna looked around the room; there had to be some other way to get the gate open, since there wasn't a door or any other way into the next room. Up on a high ledge, which looked to only be accessible by ascending another magnetized wall, was a blue diamond that looked awfully suspicious.

She knew that the diamond had to be their way into the next room, but she wasn't sure what exactly they had to do to it to make it work its magic for them. Maybe they would have to get up to it and push it into the ground. Maybe they would have to open it up somehow.

' _Or maybe I can just shoot it_.'

The laser ricocheted right off the diamond and would have struck her if her reaction time hadn't been fast enough, but Vanna's plan worked. The diamond turned yellow, and the gate started to open, making a disgusting grating noise that made her cringe in discomfort. The sound caught the attention of the Bulblins, and they finally noticed Link and Vanna standing there. They screeched as they ran over to attack. Link wiped them out without a problem.

"Thanks for ... whatever you just did to open up the gate," Link said.

She stayed where she was and surveyed the room. Link proceeded in figuring that the coast was clear, only for one of the spinning wardrobes to stop and shoot a beam of lava at him. He did a backflip to get away from it, and the lava beam stopped.

"How did it know I was standing there?!" Link yelled.

Vanna could barely even think about what he said. "How the _hell_ did you just _backflip?!_ "

Link ran back to her, but he kept his eyes on the wardrobe until he was by her side. "There's gotta be an enemy in there or somethin'," he answered himself. "And—I've always been able to backflip...?"

She stared at him incredulously for a few seconds before she started to think about the wardrobe. "If we were in my world, I'd say that it located you by a sensor that automatically went off when you got within a radius of it, sending a signal to shoot at you, without the help of a living being, but... I guess you could be right about there being an enemy in there, since Hyrule's technology isn't as advanced as my world's," Vanna said. She shrugged. "Is ' _magic_ ' an acceptable answer for how it's able to track you down and shoot a beam of lava at you?"

"Beam," Link repeated. " _That's_ what they are. _Beamos_. They just don't look or act like the ones I've read about. The ones I've read about shot beams of electricity, like your gun."

She hummed. "I guess your world isn't so primitive after all. ...Even if you all rely on magic to create high-tech things instead of science."

"We're just gonna have to avoid them. The only way that I know Beamos can be killed is with bombs, and we don't have any."

Vanna raised an eyebrow. "Are you sure?"

Rather than voicing her idea, she decided to test it out. She waited for one to spin around until the pink circle that lava got shot out of was facing them, and then she shot at it. The pink part shattered, and the whole machine whirred and made clunky noises as it came to a stop.

"That wasn't in any of the books..." Link said.

"Neither was my gun."

She shot at and deactivated the other one when it came around, allowing them to get to the locked door to the following room without having to worry about them. It led back outside, though the area enclosed by the volcano's earthen walls didn't seem to have any magma like the other outside area did. Along with another metal crane, there were wooden towers and ramps, patrolled by Bulblins, that connected to the walls. At once, Vanna saw the Bulblins each pull out something like candles. It wasn't until those ' _candles_ ' suddenly shot toward them that she realized what they truly were. An arrow with a flaming broadhead impaled the wood of the deck they were standing on, just yards away from them. Before she had the chance to freak out in fear of the wooden deck catching fire, the small flames of the arrow flickered away.

"I don't think I'll be able to shoot them down from here, but if we get any closer they'll be able to shoot us..." Vanna said.

"What? Why can't you shoot them?" Midna asked. "You had no problem hitting the Beamos."

"Those Bulblins are _way_ farther away. The laser would end up dying out before it would actually get the chance to hit them." While what Vanna said was probably true, she decided to leave out the fact that she probably couldn't aim her shots correctly from such a distance. She'd really only practiced with her gun a tiny bit before coming to Hyrule, just enough to make Mr. Rider feel comfortable sending her away by herself.

"Well, I don't think Link's boomerang could kill them, and I don't feel like wasting my magic on them, so it looks like you two are just gonna have to book it as fast as you can to that door over there. I'm going to take a nap."

"Midna! Come on," Vanna groaned.

"I _said_ I'm taking a nap. Coming all the way up the mountain sure was hard work... I'm just _exhausted_."

Link gently placed his calloused fingertips on Vanna's arm, drawing her attention to him. He didn't say anything, but she could tell what he wanted to say from his eyes. He was telling her that he knew just as well as she did that it wasn't fair that they had to risk their lives and blood just because Midna would rather nap than ' _waste_ ' her magic, and that there was no point fighting with her about it. It was supposed to calm her, but it really only made her angrier. How was he _okay_ with letting Midna get away with her bullshit?!

Vanna clenched her fists and let out a disgruntled sigh. "Let's just go. You first, since you've got a shield."

With a nod, Link pulled his shield off his back, and held it out in front of him, high enough up so that he could see where to run. Vanna ran behind him, staying leaned over just in case an arrow would manage to fly over his shield. She hurried ahead of him when they neared the door so that she could open it while he continued to guard them from the onslaught of arrows with his shield. She struggled to open the door, and they slipped inside with it barely a fourth of the way open. It rolled back over and closed with a slam.

After making their way across the room over some ramps, they entered the room of the next Goron elder. While the last one they saw was by far the smallest she'd seen, this one was by far the creepiest. His lower lip was dangling off his face, and he looked emaciated. His big blue eyes were sunken in, and his cheekbones and ribs were protruding heavily. His appearance got Vanna wondering about Goron's internal anatomy, their eating habits, their lifespans, and all the other intricacies of their beings, so much so that she barely picked up what he said aside from his name until he handed Link a key shard and said something about _dangers_. She perked up then to listen.

"But there is something that may help you... A weapon said to have been left in this mine by a Hero of old. It is beyond price, so we have protected it through generations. Now, it could aid in our salvation. The Hero's weapon is stored safely up ahead, protected by a guard. Speak to him, and take it with you, with the blessing of the Gorons."

As they were leaving Gor Ebizo's room, Vanna grabbed the new key shard from Link and dropped it into her pouch with the first one. The new room that they went to was another one filled with lava—she could tell before she even stepped in and saw it all. It was a straight shot over to another door, but a Goron that had to be at least fifteen feet tall stood in between the two doors on a giant magnet suspended above the lava by chains that looked much too thin.

" _Humans?_ " the Goron's voice boomed through the room. He stood and rubbed his armored fists together. "What business do humans have coming here? None! No business! This place is forbidden!"

"We just want to get the Hero's weapon!" Vanna said.

Even from a decent distance away, she could see that what she said sparked a flame in his eyes. "I will protect the treasure from you at all costs!"

As the Goron began stomping his way toward them, Link and Vanna shared a glance at each other, and she figured that they were thinking the same thing. The Goron couldn't exactly chase both of them at the same time, and with his weight slowing him down greatly, they could just run around him.

But when they both took off onto the magnet at the same time, Link shouted, "What are you doing?! Go back!" at her.

She ignored Link and ran past the Goron with ease, despite the magnet's pull on her. Vanna was steps away from making it to the other side when the chains holding the magnet snapped. She threw herself forward, just barely able to grab onto the ledge in time. She pulled herself up to safety, heart beating in her chest as fast as it could. She turned back around and looked down, preparing herself for the worst. A sigh escaped her as she saw that the magnet hadn't been completely engulfed by the magma below. Link was fine—ignoring the fact that he was trapped down there with an angry fifteen feet fall living rock and he had no way to get back up.

Vanna watched him anxiously from above. The Goron continuously tried to punch Link and failed, and Link continuously tried to stab the Goron and failed. It seemed like the fight was going nowhere when Link finally spotted an opening, and used their technique from earlier to get the Goron to curl up into a ball. Rather than jumping up onto his back to catapult himself up, he grabbed the Goron and threw him down into the magma. The Goron climbed back up onto the magnet, his tremendous weight tilting it so much that Vanna feared it would tip over entirely. If Link hadn't been standing on the other side wearing his iron boots, he definitely would have been a goner.

The magnet stabilized as the Goron got back on the center of it. He didn't try to attack Link again. Vanna guessed that he was talking to Link, but she was too high up to hear what he was saying. The magma began to bubble and rise, the magnet raising with it, until the magnet was back up as high as it had been. Link hopped out of his iron boots and walked her way, looking a lot less pleased than she thought he would be.

"What did he say?" she asked as they began to walk toward the door.

"He said I could have the Hero's weapon as long as I use it to save the patriarch," Link answered, opening his mouth the absolute smallest amount necessary to get his words out.

"Did he break your jaw or something?"

Link lightly shook his head, and Vanna pursed her lips. He opened the door slower than he did all the other times, and they stepped through. It was brighter in the new room, allowing her to see just how red his face was.

"Then what's wrong with your face?" she asked.

He glanced over at her. It wasn't _quite_ like the death glare Malo gave her, but it was close enough to make her worry that she just made him hate her.

"I wasn't trying to be rude, it's just that you're so red and barely opening your mou—"

"I feel sick," Link quickly interrupted, coming to a halt. He squeezed his eyes shut. "Gimme a minute and just— _shh_."

Vanna stood there by his side for several awkward seconds before deciding to go ahead and open the treasure chest in the room while waiting. Inside was a wooden and metal bow and a quiver filled with arrows. When she turned back around, items in hand, Link was on his hands and knees at the edge of the ground, vomiting down into the magma. She slowly walked over to him. She couldn't recall a time where she ever watched someone else get sick, or a time where she ever even got sick herself, so she wasn't sure what to do.

"You okay there?" she asked when it seemed he was done.

He sighed and sat on his legs, his head down and brows furrowed together. " _Shhh_."

"Do you have a headache or something?" Midna asked in what was probably the loudest not-screaming voice she could muster.

Link's hands flew up to his head. " _Yes_ ," he nearly hissed out.

"It'd probably go away if we got out of this heat," Midna said. "So maybe you should just get up and hurry up to the last Goron elder."

After a moment, Link nodded and slowly started to get to his feet. Vanna frowned as she noticed him wobble a bit.

"He's _sick_ , Midna," Vanna said.

"He won't be once we're out of here."

"He won't _get_ out of here if he ends up falling into lava because he's too sick to stand up straight!"

"'m fine, Vanna," Link said, words somewhat slurring together. "We... We'll jus—just hurry. We're almost done..."

She wanted to say that it was painfully obvious that he wasn't fine, but there wasn't a point. It was two against one, even though she could see that Link didn't actually want to side with Midna. He only did because admitting the truth would come with the consequence of her complaining.

He reached his hand out, and it took her a moment to realize that was his way of asking for the bow. She handed both it and the quiver over. Once the quiver was secure around his back, he nocked an arrow and aimed it at a rope holding up a drawbridge. On his first try, the arrow sliced through the rope, and the bridge slammed down loudly. Link's face scrunched up, but as quickly as it did, it fell back to being normal—and his body fell as well.

"Link!" Vanna knelt down beside him on the ground and shook him a few times. "Link, wake up!"

When he didn't move, she shook him even harder, but he still lay there unconscious. She gently smacked his face a few times, and again nothing came of it. Her hands curled up into fists at her sides. She _knew_ he was going to end up having a heat stroke.

"Aww," Midna cooed as she appeared at Vanna's side.

"' _Aww_ ,' _what_?" Vanna said.

"You're worried about him!" Midna giggled. "How very sweet of you."

Vanna rolled her eyes. "Of course I am! I know there's no way I can fight that _Fyrus_ guy by myself, and you need that Fused Shadow so you can bring my bracelet back and I can go home, and if Link dies, then ... I really am trapped here."

"Do you think he's going to die?"

Vanna grabbed her phone out of her pouch. "No. I'm not letting him."

She saw Midna hover over her shoulder to look down at her phone in the corner of her eye. "What are you doing?" Midna asked.

_Sorry if you're busy but I need help. It's urgent. What do I do if somebody's having a heat stroke, he's unconscious, and I have no access to a hospital or doctor or anything cold?_

She sent the text to Zi's mom as fast as she could, ignoring Midna's question. Mrs. Rider was the only doctor Vanna knew and could rely on in a situation like the one she was in. Her eyes flickered back and forth between her phone and Link every few seconds, either to see if Mrs. Rider texted her back yet, or if Link was still breathing.

_Bring him to the coolest place you can find, take off any clothes he doesn't need to wear, and fan him off. If you have water, wet his skin._

Vanna read the message aloud for Midna's sake, and as soon as she was done, she yanked off Link's hat. She wasn't going to bet on him wearing underwear or not, so she settled on taking off everything except his pants. It felt wrong to take an unconscious person's shirt off, but she had to hope he'd prefer his life over modesty, especially after she had already seen him shirtless once before. His feet were littered with blisters from not wearing socks, and Vanna was sure it was for that same reason that his feet somehow managed to stink even more than his armpits.

She poured small amounts of water from her canteen here and there on his body, but she focused most of it on his dry face since his clothes had still been damp in the first place. The only orders she had left to do once she felt his skin was sufficiently wet were to fan him off and bring him to the coolest place she could find. There was no way she could possibly drag Link back to one of the cool rooms with water in it, but even those didn't seem like they would suffice, because they were really only cool in comparison to the infernal heat of all the other rooms.

"Ooccoo!" she exclaimed.

Vanna snatched his pouch out from under him and opened it up. Ooccoo and her son flew out, enlarging back to their normal size as they did. It hadn't even been that long since she had last seen them, yet again she found herself stunned by how freaky they were.

"Can your son warp us out of here down to the spring in Kakariko? Please?"

Midna groaned. "Just wait for him to wake up here! Why are you trying to waste time?!"

"Because he might not wake up at all if he stays here! Why are _you_ so apathetic even when Link could _die?!_ " Vanna said. "I don't want him to get out of here to waste time, I want him to get out of here to _save his life._ I think you're forgetting that if he dies, you're not getting your powers back."

Midna hid in Vanna's shadow again with a humph. " _Whatever_."

"Yes, yes, you can warp out!" Ooccoo said. "You'll return right here, so there are no worries! Just ask him whenever you are ready! Now, bon voyage!"

Before her son got a chance to do anything, Vanna hurried and stuffed Link's discarded clothes into his pouch. Ooccoo Jr. made unintelligible babbling noises as he flew in circles around them, going faster and faster until Vanna's vision went black. Unlike when Midna used a portal to get them out of the Forest Temple, Ooccoo Jr.'s warping lacked the strange breaking-apart feeling and didn't leave her with a headache. The sudden change in temperature shocked her even though she was expecting it. They appeared just in front of the spring in the same positions they had been in before. Ooccoo Jr. scurried into Link's pouch that was still open in Vanna's hands, and she sat it to the side.

Remembering how the spring's water healed Beth's arm, Vanna scooped some of it up in her hands and poured it over Link's blistered feet. For just a second, his toes curled up. She moved closer to his head and again lightly smacked his cheeks a few times. His brows drew together, lips slightly parted, and he let out a tiny groan.

"Link, wake up," she softly said.

"Are you _kidding_ me?" Midna said. She came out of her shadow, hovered right over Link's face, and shouted, " _Wake up!_ " at the top of her lungs.

Link's body jolted and his eyes snapped open. Midna retreated to Vanna's shadow, but not until after she gave her a snobby ' _I did it and you didn't_ ' look. Link slowly pushed himself up so he was resting back on his hands. He looked shocked for a second, and then he just looked confused.

"Uh... Where's my shirt and my boots?" he asked. His hand flew up to the back of his head. "And my hat?"

Vanna crossed her arms. "Your dumb ass had a heat stroke because of that stupid hat. I had to take some of your clothes off and get you out of the mines so you wouldn't die. You're welcome."

"Thanks," Link said with a sigh. His eyes narrowed slightly. "...Did you just call my hat stupid again?"


	13. A Life Lost

At Vanna's insistence and Midna's resistance, Link agreed to get checked out by Renado before heading back to the mines. Link slowly staggered barefoot along the dirt road that made up Kakariko Village, Vanna's hand hovering over his arm in case he stumbled. She had really wanted to go fetch Renado by herself and bring him back so Link wouldn't have to exert himself, but Link thought it would be better for him to just go along. He said he felt fine, really, it was just that his feet hurt. Vanna kept a watchful eye on him anyway, not trusting him to tell the truth when it came to how bad he felt.

The lobby of the Elde Inn was empty when they entered. She told Link to wait a second while she got Renado, then went upstairs to the hotel's lone room. Colin was sleeping on his bed while Beth, Luda, and Renado looked over him, and Talo was frowning over in his direction from a bed in the corner. Vanna approached Renado and reached up to tap him on his shoulder. Once she had his attention, she asked if he would go downstairs with her to check out Link. He nodded and followed her down to the lobby, where Link had taken a seat on a stool.

"He had a heat stroke in the mines," she told Renado. "I just want to make sure he's okay to head back so we can finish up in there."

Renado questioned Link on how he felt both before his heat stroke and afterward, briefly looked him over, then walked into the kitchen and returned with a bottle of red liquid. Link downed it in seconds. He thanked Renado and handed it back to him without a trace of the medicine left in it.

"It is called _Death Mountain_ for a reason, you know," Renado said. "Humans are not made to be able to survive for long in such extreme conditions. Do not spend more time there than you must."

"So I'm good to go?" Link asked.

Renado nodded. "Just try to take it easy for the rest of today."

"Before we go," Vanna said, looking up at Renado, "will you tell him to keep his hat off?"

"It would certainly be wise to not wear a heat-retaining item of clothing inside a volcano."

She gave Link the ' _I told you so_ ' look, to which he rolled his eyes back. He reached into his pouch and pulled out the clothes Vanna had taken off of him, sans his hat.

"Should you begin to feel off again, listen to what your body is telling you," Renado went on. "If there is nothing stopping you from leaving the volcano when you need to, then do it. Continuing to fight when you need to stop is a sure way to hurt yourself."

Once Renado was upstairs, Vanna paraphrased what he said. "Nothing's stopping you from leaving when you need to. You don't have to keep fighting." It wasn't like she wanted to convince Link to back out—she'd be screwed if he did—but she still wasn't over their little fight from earlier in the day, and Renado's words reminded her of it.

It seemed to take Link a second for what she said to go through. He sighed. "I _can't_ just go back to Ordon whenever I want to. I don't know what else I gotta tell you to get that through your head."

"But you _can_. Even Renado thinks so."

"But. I. _Can't_." Link slipped his shirt back over his head. "It's my destiny to defend Hyrule. I _have_ to. I fight because I have no choice."

"I don't understand what makes you think you don't have a choice," Vanna said, her words coming out harsher than she intended them to.

"I," Link said, sitting up straight, "am the Hero Chosen by the Goddesses. I can't go against their will."

Vanna rolled her eyes. "Uh huh. And how do you know that you're ' _the Hero Chosen by the Goddesses_ '? Did an angel appear to you in a prophetic dream?"

"A Light Spirit relayed it to me."

She was reminded of the night when Link told her a Light Spirit had been talking to him, when he was staring straight ahead and listening intently, and she saw and heard nothing but the rustles of the trees and the trickling water in the spring. She genuinely worried that he was schizophrenic or something. It was one thing to believe in their existence, like Midna seemed to, but another to believe they were talking to him personally. "So, how come only _you_ saw and heard that Light Spirit down in Faron? Why didn't it appear to me?"

Link shrugged. "I guess Faron had nothing to say to you." He paused. "Do you ... not believe in the Light Spirits?"

"No, I don't believe in them. Or your ' _Golden Goddesses_.'"

He stared at her face blankly, like he was expecting her to crack any second and tell him she was just joking. "...I understand you not believing in the Light Spirits—I've heard of some people from Hyrule not believing in them either, since they've never seen or heard from them like you—but everyone _knows_ the Golden Goddesses are real. Maybe you don't believe in them because they didn't create _your_ world, but they definitely created mine."

" _Suuure."_

"Vanna—"

"Believe whatever you want to," she interrupted him, holding her hands up. "I'll believe in the Light Spirits when I see one. And maybe then I'll consider believing that this world was created by Goddesses who shaped your destiny."

He breathed out a short laugh and shook his head. "No wonder you and Midna clash so much. You're too much alike."

" _What?!_ " Vanna nearly screeched. "I am not _anything_ like her!"

"You're both so ... _stubborn_. It's ridiculous."

She huffed and crossed her arms. "Well you're a pushover."

"I know," he said under his breath. "I know."

* * *

Back in the mines, neither of them said anything.

Vanna felt both better and worse at the same time. There was no resolve from their conversation, but at least there was closure in having it. It left her with an understanding of where Link was coming from, even if she thought it was absurd. She couldn't believe he had the gall to say that she was like Midna, though. She had no problem conceding that they were both stubborn, but that was absolutely it. She had nothing else in common with her.

Even without talking to each other, getting to the last Goron elder was quick. When he handed over the last key shard, Vanna got out the other ones and slotted them all together. She swapped out the completed key for the map as they left the Goron's room. Darbus's location was marked on the map by a drawing of a skull.

Since she had the map and knew where to go, she led the way. Link followed behind her silently, coming forward only to kill the Torch Slugs and flaming bats ahead of them with his newly acquired bow and to open the door. Once they were through and back outside, they were up on the dock of a magnetic crane they couldn't reach before. It dropped them off in front of the room that they first saw Beamos in. Once they got through it, they would be back outside where the Bulblins were guarding the ramps, and from there they just had to take a different path to get to Darbus. Vanna started trying to open the door, but it wasn't too long before Link came up beside her and rolled it open with ease. She contemplated thanking him—she really was thankful he had opened it, because she admittedly was a weakling and the doors were surprisingly heavy and hard for her to move—but it still felt too soon to say anything to him after their last little skirmish.

Link opened the door leading back outside as well, and then he systematically began to shoot down the Bulblins with his bow and arrows. He didn't miss his targets on the ones that were closer to them, but the farther away they were, the more tries it took. They couldn't move any closer to them though, because already the Bulblin's own arrows were just feet away from hitting them. No matter how many times Link tried, he just couldn't get the last three who were the farthest away from them. When he had run out of his own arrows and had to carefully reach forward and grab some of theirs that had missed them, he was starting to get visibly frustrated. Vanna couldn't stay quiet anymore.

"You can't see them, can you?" she said.

He sighed. "I can _kinda_ see where they are when they have their fire arrows out. Otherwise... No. It's all a blur." Link pursed his lips for a second, then dropped his bow-wielding arm to his side and turned to look at her. "Do you think you could, maybe...?"

Her eyebrows raised. "Uh, there is _no_ way."

"But your vision is good, isn't it? You can see 'em just fine."

"Well, yeah, but, I mean..." she stuttered. "I've never held a bow in my life."

Link held it out to her. "Neither have I before today." Before she could make an assertion of her disbelief, he started speaking again. "I haven't. I mean it." He held the bow out closer toward her. "Just try to do exactly what you saw me doing."

Vanna hesitated before giving in and grabbing the bow. Link handed her an arrow, and she tried to hold the bow and arrow exactly how he did. "Like this?"

"...Good enough. Now just aim and let go."

She took a few moments to line up her shot, and when she felt it was right, she let go of the arrow. It wasn't right, missing the Bulblin she was aiming for by a good twenty feet, but she at least had it in the right direction it needed to be going. She was slightly embarrassed with Link watching her, feeling like he definitely would have gotten it on the first try if he could only see. Vanna nocked another arrow and aimed it much higher, but that time it was too high. She tried again, and again, and again, gradually lowering her aim every time, until she finally hit the Bulblin in the head and it died. She smiled and jumped up and down, loudly proclaiming that she did it, only to settle down when she remembered that Link was still watching her. Embarrassment washed over her again when she looked over to see him looking like he was trying not to laugh.

"Good," Link said, smiling. "Do it again."

It was slightly easier the second time, and slightly easier again the third time, though still quite difficult, but she did it. Her work done, Vanna held the bow out to Link for him to take.

"...You don't like using your sword, do you?" It was a question, but he worded it more like a statement.

She shrugged. "Not really. I really don't know because I've barely gotten to use it, but I don't think I'll ever be that comfortable whipping around a giant knife."

"Okay." Link took his quiver off and tried to hand it over to her.

"Link, I—"

"You'll get good, you just need practice. Then I can handle close-distance fighting and you can handle long-distance. Sound good?" he said, nudging the quiver toward her again.

Vanna looked back and forth at the quiver and Link as she contemplated it. A bow was a lot closer to her gun than a sword ever would be. It was also a lot lighter than a sword, so it would be easier to use if she could only better her aim. She could keep a safe distance from enemies with it, too.

"Fine," she said, grabbing it and putting it over her shoulder.

She put the bow into her pouch, and they started on their way across the ramps. She used her gun to kill a Beamos that was on the opposite side of the way they originally left the room from, and they went up a ramp that it had been blocking. Link used his iron boots on a switch to activate what Vanna hoped was the last magnetic crane they'd ever have to use. They hitched a ride on it, and it brought them over to a bridge held up by a rope. Vanna opted for shooting the rope with her gun, and the bridge slammed down just when the magnet dropped them. Feeling slightly disoriented, she checked the map. Once they got through the room past the bridge, which looked short enough, they would be in Darbus's room.

There were a few more Bulblin archers in the next room who were oblivious to their entrance. Vanna nearly brought out her gun, since they were close enough for her to aim at with it, but she decided that it would be good to practice her aim with the bow and arrow on them. Killing them in fewer tries than the last ones gave her a confidence boost, even though it probably shouldn't have since they were much closer anyway.

The giant door, with its equally giant lock, that would open up into Darbus's room was just past another bridge. Like in the Forest Temple, Vanna had to get up on Link's shoulders to get the key into the lock. Their movements were better coordinated this time, the lock falling and her getting down without a hitch. Her heart started to beat harder in anticipation of what was beyond the door. She couldn't imagine something scarier than Diababa, but video game logic told her that Fyrus would have to be a step beyond it.

They rolled the door open together—though it was debatable how much she truly helped—and entered the room. It was quite dark in there, the only source of light being the magnetic floor emanating a soft blue glow. In the middle of the room was a gargantuan creature, all black and shadowy like Midna, with his ankles chained to the ground and his arms chained to two of the pillars circling the room. He had some sort of helmet on, though it was hard to distinguish in the darkness.

An orange gem resembling a cat eye on his helmet suddenly lit up, supplying more light to the room. It was only after Vanna got over that jump scare that she realized what she thought was a helmet was actually just his head. Two beady eyes glowed along with the gem, and the extra light allowed her to see that he had giant fangs protruding from his mouth. He hunched over so his head was as close to them as possible and roared like a bear, his smoldering breath blowing against them like a strong gust of wind. He stood up and looked at his cuffed wrists. He threw his head back, let out another roar, and his body erupted into flames. With staggering ease, he yanked his hands forward and broke the chains, freeing himself.

As Fyrus began to stomp toward them, Vanna reached into her pouch and grabbed the bow. She remembered how Diababa had an eyeball inside its mouth that they attacked to kill it, and figured that the gem on Fyrus's forehead was essentially his version of that. She missed once, and decided to give herself one more try before booking it to the other side of the room to avoid being stomped on. The arrow collided with the gem on her second try. Fyrus roared in pain, stopping in his tracks and holding his hands over the gem. She was clueless about what to do next. She couldn't shoot him in the gem again with his hands covering it, and there was no way they could get close enough to his flaming body to stab him.

Link grabbed her arm and ran with her behind Fyrus. He put his iron boots on and grabbed one of the chains attached to Fyrus's foot. Vanna wondered why Link had brought her around with him—surely he knew that she wouldn't be of much help him when it came to pulling the chain if that was what he wanted—but his decision made sense when Fyrus tried to walk forward again only to promptly fall over right where they had been standing because of Link pulling at his ankle. The flames covering his body dwindled upon his impact with the ground.

Already Vanna knew how the rest of the fight was going to go. Link ran over to Fyrus's head to attack his weak spot while she backed herself up against the wall and readied the bow again. Link ran to her when Fyrus stood back up. The monster became engulfed in flames once more, and turned to face them. She shot him in the gem again, and as she ran around him with Link again, all she could think was that this had to be the easiest boss fight. As long as she was quick enough in hitting his gem each time he rose, Fyrus wouldn't be able to do anything. More than likely there would be just one more round, and then the fight would be theirs, and they would walk out unscathed.

And naturally, she had to be proven wrong immediately after thinking that. Fyrus stood up and turned to Vanna the second time much quicker than anticipated, and before she could even loose her arrow, Fyrus swung one of his chains like a whip against her, and she flew back into the wall. She slid down and slumped against the wall, throwing her arm over where the chain hit her on her ribs. The bow had fallen out of her hand, and with Fyrus getting closer to her every second, she knew she didn't have time to go forward and get it. She scrambled away along the wall, hoping she could circle back around to it.

Too caught up by her own movements and the throbbing pain in her ribs and back, Vanna didn't realize that Link had managed to get the bow until he ran over to her with it in his hand. He grabbed an arrow from the quiver, and when Fyrus noticed where they were and started to come over, Link shot his gem. She moved out of the way so that Fyrus wouldn't fall on her when Link tripped him. Fyrus only took a few more slashes from Link's sword before writhing and screaming in the pain of his defeat. His body turned back into a shadow before tiny black squares exploded out of him. A smaller, but still large shadow was in his place, and it fell to the ground as the black squares all came together above Link and formed the second Fused Shadow.

Midna came out of Vanna's shadow and floated over to it. "Well done! Now we have two Fused Shadows..." She grabbed it with her hand-hair, and it disappeared behind her back. Vanna slowly walked over to stand next to Link. "You know, you two have been very helpful so far, so as a reward, I'll tell you an interesting story."

Vanna sighed. They were still inside a volcano, and Midna thought it was a good time to tell them a story.

" _Zant_ ," she spat. "That's the name of the King of Darkness who cast this pall of shadows over this world. He's very strong. Both of you together would still be nothing against him in your current states... But Zant will never be my king! I have nothing but scorn for his supposed strength. Not that Zelda is much better... It still appalls me that this world of light is controlled by that princess. A carefree youth, a life of luxury... How does that teach duty?" Midna turned away from both of them. "...But I guess I shouldn't begrudge her the circumstances of her life. She didn't choose it, after all. And I would never wish harm on her... No, as long as I can get my hands on the Fused Shadows, I'll be just fine."

"Are you done monologuing yet?" Vanna asked.

" _Yes_ , I'm done," Midna said. With a flick of her wrist, a portal appeared on the ground. "There's only one more Fused Shadow left... Shall we?"

One more. Just one more, and she could go home.

A deep groan brought Vanna out of her daydream about going home. The large shadow had gradually faded out of being a shadow during Midna's monologue, and was back in the form of the Goron who had been corrupted by the Fused Shadow. Vanna was relieved that Darbus didn't have to die after all.

Link and Vanna walked onto the portal, and Midna warped them out. The feeling of breaking up into tiny little slices was still just as jarring to Vanna, and again she got a headache when she was all put back together. They appeared back in the spring at the end of Kakariko Village. Just like the first time Midna had warped them to a spring, Link stared straight forward, supposedly listening to the words of the Light Spirit that lived in the spring. Vanna still didn't see or hear anything. Link's eyebrows raised, and then the corners of his mouth slightly turned up.

"What'd it say to you?" she asked him.

"Ilia is in Lanayru," he said.

Vanna almost forgot about his girlfriend. "So, I guess you want to hurry up and go find her even though Renado told you to take it easy, huh?"

"I know I should take it easy, but something could happen to her. I need to find her as quick as I can," Link said.

"Well then, let's go get rid of the twilight in Lanayru so you can find her," Midna said. "Vanna, you'll have to stay behind again."

She nodded and looked at Link. "I know you want to spend time with your girlfriend, but maybe don't take too long this time?"

Link's eyes widened and he blushed. "What?! Ilia's not my girlfriend! I-I never even had one..."

Vanna raised her eyebrows. It was hard to believe that someone as attractive as him managed to go seventeen years without a girlfriend. "Really? Midna told me Ilia was your girlfriend."

Midna snickered. "He's denying it."

"I'm not denying anything," Link said. He sounded like he was definitely denying something. "Ilia's the only girl in my village that's around the same age as me, and Midna assumed she's my girlfriend because of that, but she's not. She's my best friend. That's all."

' _Good_ ,' Vanna thought. Immediately, she was ashamed of how happy it made her to know they weren't dating, despite it seeming like he wanted to date her. She knew several girls back home who were jealous of her for being Zi's best friend, and she always thought they were being ridiculous, but there she was being just as ridiculous as them. She couldn't help it though. Link was just one of _those_ people, impossible to _not_ be attracted to, pushover or not.

"Oh," she said. "People always assume I'm dating my best friend, too. Or they _did_ , I guess, before I came here. But..." She couldn't help the little smile that crept up on her face. One more Fused Shadow, and then she could go back home and be annoyed at all of Zi's little fangirls. She had never been more excited at the prospect of being annoyed. "I guess you should be going then, huh?"

Link nodded, and Midna hopped into his shadow. "I want to go see Colin real quick first, and I think it's your turn to go get checked out by Renado."

As they started to walk to the Elde Inn, Vanna's hand went to her ribs. She didn't feel any breaks or fractures, and most of the pain had subsided already. It only hurt a little when she pressed down on them. She wondered if just standing in the miracle water of the spring for that short amount of time helped to heal her, regardless of the fact that the water didn't even come in contact with her skin. Along their walk, Vanna continuously pressed down on her ribs again and again, seeing if the lingering pain would wear off as quickly as the rest of it did.

Link's demeanor changed when they got to the Elde Inn's deck, and as far as Vanna could tell, for no reason. He suddenly looked plagued with worry, and he raced inside, leaving her behind. He was already over halfway up the stairs by the time she stepped in. She stopped just in front of the door.

She didn't have to follow Link upstairs to know what had happened. The crying she heard was enough.


	14. Spirits

She couldn't just stand there in the Elde Inn and listen to the kids crying upstairs, so Vanna left. Part of her wanted to be there with them and try to comfort them, but the idea of comforting grieving people that she barely knew seemed kind of weird, even if the intentions behind it were nice. She knew that after her dad died, she sought the comfort of her friends and family, not a stranger.

She didn't know what to do. For about a minute, she just stood there on the deck, tapping her fingers on the railing as she finally took the time to thoroughly scan the village from end to end in the daylight. There wasn't exactly much to look at. Most of the run-down wooden houses were boarded up, giving Vanna the feeling that Renado and Luda were the only people who had lived in the village in some time. Near the northern end of the village was one of the few buildings not boarded up, and in front of it was a sign. Some of the letters on it were close enough to their English counterparts that she had no problem telling that it at least said _bomb shop_ —though the painting of a bomb right below it might have helped a touch—but the word above it just looked like _bHPheS_ to her. She had already figured out what most of those letters really were, but she was unable to figure out what the _P_ in the middle was, leaving her with _baPnes_ which she was sure couldn't be right.

A bomb shop seemed oddly out of place with Renado in mind. Vanna had only met him the day before, and she only had very few interactions with him, but he didn't seem to be the kind of man who would approve of the usage of bombs, especially in his village. She thought that physical violence could only be a last resort for him, if a resort at all. Her curiosity piqued, she made her way over to the building, and knocked on its metal door a few times. It was faint, but she heard a voice call " _Come in!_ "

When she first entered, she didn't see anyone. She only saw a wooden counter, metal stairs to the side of it, and a lot of metal contraptions and pipes lining the underside of the second floor. Vanna walked up the stairs to see a man packing a black powdery substance into a bag. He looked eccentric, almost out of place in Kakariko Village in comparison to Renado and Luda, considering their Native-esque appearance and his cowboy-esque apparel, with his white tank, denim jeans, chaps, and cowboy boots. Like them, at least, it was easy to imagine him as a person from America, albeit from a long time in the past.

"Rena—oh," his voice fell as he turned his head to her. He pushed up his welding helmet. "You ain't Renado. You a customer?" He had a strong Southern accent, and that fact in conjunction with his rounded ears led Vanna to speculate that he was perhaps from Ordon.

"Uh, I don't have any money, so, no," she answered.

"Well, good, because I ain't got anythin' to sell you." He flipped his helmet back down and got back to work. "I can't get the materials I need from the Gorons anymore, so I can't finish makin' more bombs. If they'd just knock off this li'l hissy fit they've been throwing lately..."

"I think they're about done with their ' _hissy fit,_ ' or they should be soon enough. They were having a little _problem_ with their patriarch," Vanna said, unsure of how much the man knew about what had happened with the Gorons in the first place, "but I think he's all better now."

He stopped his work and looked back at her. "You talked to 'em?" After she nodded, the man stood and removed his helmet, and sat it on a desk. "Looks like I'm headin' up the mountain, then! If you get your hands on any money, feel free to stop back by soon. I should have my shop reopened in a few days."

"Before I go—what's the name of this place?" she asked. She wanted to unravel the _baPnes_ mystery, hoping that it would help her be able to decode any other written things that she might come across.

"Barnes' Bomb Shop. I've got a sign just outside, you know. Look for it if you come back," he said as he started to pick up tools and put them inside a magic pouch.

"Will do," Vanna said with a nod, knowing it would be better to pretend she just hadn't seen the sign. She mentally took note that _P_ 's were _R_ 's, adding to what knowledge she had of Hyrule's writing system.

Once she was outside of the shop, she settled on heading to the store on the other side of town that Malo had gone to earlier in the morning, hoping there would be someone else in there, too. Unfortunately, nobody was in the tiny shop. Displayed on a shelf behind the counter were only three items—a shield that looked very similar in design to the one from Link's basement, a red flagon, and a metal mask in the shape of a hawk's face. Vanna climbed over the counter and picked up the strange mask, and flipped it over to inspect it. The back side of it resembled a pair of binoculars, and when she held it up to her face, she realized that was precisely what it was. An unintentional movement of her finger on a scroll wheel on the side of the mask caused the binoculars to zoom in farther. Testing it out, she found that it could zoom in so far that she could see each and every tiny scratch and crack on the wooden floor as if her eyes were right in front of them. They would have been really helpful in the mines when Link was having trouble seeing to shoot the bow.

Vanna put the binoculars back down and picked up the flagon. Something sloshed around inside of it as she moved it, but it felt too thick to be some sort of drink. She opened the top and peeked in. There was red liquid inside; she wondered if it was the same stuff that Renado had given Link to drink. She tried to sniff it, and the hint of a medicinal smell was overpowered by a completely repugnant smell, like sulfur and fire and _heat_. Though she wasn't a stranger to high temperatures by any means, with Jersey being in the high 90s and low 100s all throughout the summer, it wasn't until now that she realized that heat had its own distinct smell that wasn't just the odor of a city packed with millions of sweaty people.

And it took her a second to realize that the awful smell wasn't the medicine. It was _her_.

She couldn't stand having to stink for however many more days until Midna would bring back NEVA, but just taking a bath wouldn't be enough to rid her of the volcano's stench. Her clothes smelled even stronger than her body, and they would only continue to make her stink if they weren't washed as well. The only clothing she had that would be at least slightly acceptable to wear was her crop top since she didn't wear that around in the volcano, but she obviously couldn't walk around wearing just that.

She searched through the crates in the shop, hoping that the village's only store that wasn't for bombs would have some clothes in stock, but there were only odds and ends littering the boxes. She left the store with a disgruntled sigh, weighing her options. She couldn't borrow clothes from Luda because she was too small, and she couldn't borrow clothes from Renado or Barnes because they were too big. She had half a mind to steal Epona, ride down to Ordon, and borrow more of Uli's clothes from before she got pregnant, but she didn't know when Link would want to leave for Lanayru or if he would need his horse to get there.

Her eyes fixated on one of the houses on the opposite side of the street that wasn't boarded up, then trailed over to the spring. Beyond the shallow waters and the short little waterfall was a large pool of water that, while enclosed by earthen walls on the sides, offered little privacy from the street. However, it was at least far enough back that someone would have to be in the shallows of the spring to really get a good look at anyone back in the pool. Vanna knew that Link and the kids were mourning Colin inside the inn, Renado and Luda were surely giving comfort to them, and Barnes was making his way up the mountain, but she still was nervous about being caught back there.

Ultimately she decided that she smelled too bad to care about there being a fraction of a chance that people she'd never see again would potentially see her taking a bath. She decided to check first and make sure the house she was planning on going into wasn't occupied, and it wasn't. All that was in there was a bed, a disappointingly empty wardrobe, some boxes, and a full-length mirror cracked diagonally propped up against the wall. Knowing that it was going to start to get cold soon, she headed for the spring so that she could get at least somewhat dry before it did.

Once she climbed up the waterfall, Vanna went over to one of the walls where she could stand in the water. She put the bow, quiver, and her gun in her pouch, and pulled out her crop top so she could wash that as well. She kept a look out for anyone possibly coming out of the buildings as she quickly stripped the rest of her clothes off, and then she hurried into the deeper water, leaving her clothes to soak in the shallow.

She wasn't sure if anything she did could really be considered ' _washing_ ,' what with the fact that she had no soap, but she hoped that the spring's healing water could double as cleansing water. Vanna repeatedly ran her hands through her hair and used her top as a rag on her skin until she couldn't smell herself anymore, then attempted to wash her clothes by scrubbing them together. When she was as satisfied as she thought possible, she got back up near the wall, wrung out her hair and clothes, and then slipped everything back on for her walk to the house.

An out-of-nowhere thought made Vanna stop walking abruptly just past the waterfall. Maybe it _wasn't_ implausible for Light Spirits and Goddesses to exist. Hyrule was real when it shouldn't have been. Link was real when he shouldn't have been. Magic was real when it shouldn't have been. It truthfully wasn't much of a leap in logic to believe in Light Spirits and Goddesses, not after she saw how a hunk of glowing stone could turn a giant man made of rocks into a humongous flaming monstrosity. She wasn't sure what sparked a change in her steadfastness, but she thought it had to be something in the water.

She turned back around to the waterfall. "Hey, Light Spirit?" she whispered. "Light Spirit, are you there?"

Nothing. Her belief in their nonexistence started to solidify again.

With a sigh, she turned back and headed for the house. As soon as she was inside, she locked the door behind her. She took her clothes back off and hung them in the closet to dry. Like when she got to explore Ordon by herself, she felt an exhilarating rush from being alone as she walked the street of Kakariko Village and entered the house all by herself, but it all came crashing down on her suddenly as she sat on the edge of the bed. It was easy to forget how dreadfully homesick and lonely she was in this world when she had something to concentrate on, even if it was something as simple as where she was walking.

She couldn't handle it. Vanna snatched her phone out of her pouch and called her mom, wishing desperately that the call would go through. She impatiently tapped her fingers on the side of the bed as her phone rung.

" _Hello?_ "

* * *

There was a knock at the door. "Vanna, are you in there?"

She pulled her phone away from her face. "Yes, just a second!" She lifted her phone back up to her ear. "Hey, I gotta go now. I'll call you back tomorrow, okay?"

" _Okay, sweetheart, I'll talk to you then. Goodbye!_ " her mom said.

Vanna said goodbye back, hung up her phone, and went over to the closet. Her clothes were damp and cold, but she sucked it up and put them on anyway. When she opened up the door, Luda was standing there, and it was decently dark outside behind her. The nearly-night sky made her aware of just how dark it had gotten in the house while she was distracted by her conversation with her mom.

Luda's eyebrows drew together. "Oh, my, you're all wet!"

"I needed a bath and didn't have an extra set of clothes or anything to dry off with, so..." Vanna shrugged.

"I could give you some dry clothes to wear," Luda said. "Another family used to live here, but just this last week..." Her face fell. "...They had a daughter about your size. You can have her clothes, if you'd like."

Dead girl's dry clothes or her damp clothes? A sudden shiver made her decision for her. "Th-that would be nice, yeah."

Luda gave a little smile. "Okay. We've finally got around to making dinner at the inn. Would you like to come over and eat after we get your clothes?"

Vanna accepted her offer, and then she led her over to another house. Luda left the door open so more light could spill inside. The interior looked quite similar to the house Vanna had been in, but with two extra beds and one extra wardrobe.

"They were originally from Castle Town," Luda said as she began to sift through the clothes in one of the wardrobes. "Castle Town fashion is ... quite strange, or at least it is to me. I'm trying to find something simple for you, without many unnecessary layers and accessories, since that seems like what you would want."

What she settled on was fairly simple, like she said: a black elastic belt, a long-sleeved, knee-length, light blue dress with light purple stripes on the skirt and frills at the wrists, a darker blue overshirt of sorts with purple shoulders and lacy hems on its flowing sleeves and draping bottom, and lastly a simple bra and pair of underwear. Vanna thought the dress and top looked tacky and outdated, and she wasn't too sure how she felt about wearing a stranger's underwear, but it would be better than having to wear wet freezing clothes or having to go commando in a dress.

"This dress will make a nice nightgown, as well," Luda said, laying the clothes down on the bed. She looked at Vanna, her eyes going higher up than Vanna's own at first, and then down her body. "Your hair still looks really wet. Do you want me to put it up for you so you don't get your new clothes wet?"

"You don't have to—it's nice enough that you helped me out with the clothes and came and got me for dinner already, and the dinner might get cold soon if we wait around much longer..."

"It's above the fire, it won't get cold." Luda clasped her hands in front of her chest and grinned. "Please? I really like doing hair, and I'm really quick at it, too!"

"If you don't mind, then sure," Vanna said. It definitely would be nice to not have to worry about her hair making her new clothes just as cold and wet as her other clothes.

Luda patted the bed next to the clothes, and Vanna sat down on it with her back facing her. She got to work, her delicate fingers making a French braid faster than Vanna imagined even her mother could, and then she wound up the length into a bun just above the nape of her neck.

"All finished!" she announced. "I'll leave you to get dressed, now. Come to the inn when you're done!"

Vanna thanked her, and she left her in the house with the door still opened just a speck for light. She changed into the new outfit, making sure to flip the underwear inside out first at least, and she left her boots on and swapped her pouch over to the new belt. Everything fit a lot better than she expected it would, but she felt strange walking outside. She wasn't familiar with the feeling of a long dress brushing against her legs. There were a few times on her walk to the inn that she swirled around in a circle just to feel how the fabric swooshed around her.

Just inside the Elde Inn, Link, Renado, and Luda were sitting at a round table, and Renado was talking to Link. There was a plate of food on the table between Luda and Link's seats. Luda was eating her dinner, Renado's plate was already empty, and Link was poking at his food pointlessly.

"I got a plate for you," Luda said as she noticed Vanna enter.

She sat down in front of the plate and thanked Luda once more, and then she looked at Link. He looked awful, his downcast eyes completely bloodshot and face stuck in a pained frown. It was hard to believe that just hours ago he had been holding back laughter from seeing her be so giddy about hitting her target with an arrow for the first time.

As Vanna started eating, Renado resumed talking to Link. "You should really eat your food. You'll sleep better tonight with a full stomach, and a good rest will make your journey to Castle Town tomorrow much more bearable."

Link sealed his lips tighter, but otherwise gave no indication that he had even heard what Renado said. No one said anything more as Luda and Vanna ate their dinners. Once their forks were set down, everything fell into an uncomfortable complete silence for minutes before Link shot up off his stool and walked outside. Without thinking about it, Vanna stood up and followed him out. His brisk pace had already led him to Epona by the time she was out the door. She ran up to him as he was preparing to mount his horse.

"What are you doing?" Vanna said.

Midna came out of his shadow. "Renado told him that he could get a wagon in Castle Town to bring everyone down to Ordon to hold a funeral for Colin."

"So you're leaving right now? At night?" Vanna asked Link.

He glanced her way briefly before getting up on Epona. Midna shrugged and went back into the shadows, and Link started on his way.

"Wait!" she called.

Epona slowed to a stop. Again, Vanna ran to Link, this time reaching into her pouch and fetching the bow and quiver as she did. She held them up to him.

"You might need them," she said.

He seemed to ponder if he should take them or not before taking them anyway without a word and putting them in his own pouch. With a light kick on both of Epona's sides, Link's horse began to lead him away once more. Vanna watched them until they disappeared, and continued to stand where she was for a while before slowly starting to head back to the Elde Inn. She stopped as she got to the small set of stairs to the porch, and looked behind her, at the spring.

There had to have been something in the water, because she felt like the spring was calling to her, and she couldn't ignore it. Vanna walked to the spring, and didn't stop until the water was halfway up her boots.

"I just want to see you if you're real, just for a second. You don't even have to talk to me," she whispered.

Nothing again. It was _definitely_ something in the water.

"Please?"

"They say only the brave can see them," said a tiny voice behind her.

Vanna jumped; she hadn't heard anyone come up behind her. It was one of the children, she knew, but she didn't think she had talked to any of them long enough to be able to differentiate their voices for certain without looking at them. Her first thought was that the quiet voice belonged to Colin, even though she knew it couldn't be him. She looked back to see which one it was.

Maybe it _really_ wasn't too implausible for Light Spirits to exist when a glowing apparition of Colin was floating behind her in the spring.

"...That's what my dad told me when I couldn't see Lady Ordona," he said.

She couldn't get herself to talk at first, and when she did, all she could say was " _You're dead._ "

He technically wasn't the first ghost she had ever seen, but there was a difference between Colin and the Hero's Shade that made Vanna feel like she was really seeing one for the first time. She had never seen the Hero's Shade alive, only dead, and only in a mystical snowy realm in her subconscious that was disconnected from the real world, and now she was completely conscious, completely in the real world, staring at the ghost of a child that she had seen breathing this morning.

"I know," Colin replied, looking down at his feet. He folded his arms behind his back. "But I can't pass on yet."

"You ... _have_ passed on, already," Vanna said slowly, confused.

"I've passed from life. I haven't passed from this world."

She didn't know what to say. She could only stare at his floating blue form silently.

"I can't, yet," he went on. He looked back up at her. "I need to know before I go... Can you promise me something?"

' _If I don't pass out first._ ' She nodded anyway.

"Take care of Link," Colin said quietly. "And make sure everyone ... especially him ... and especially my parents ... know how much I love them."

Vanna's mouth fell open, and she struggled to find the words she wanted to say. "L-Link will be back soon, can't you hang on just a little bit longer to see him? And he's going to go get your parents, so you can see them one last time, too. Don't you want to say goodbye?"

"It'll just hurt them more to see me this way... I can't make them hurt any more. If I have to see my parents cry over me..." Colin's eyes closed and his head turned down. "I can't do it. I can't."

"Then—then you don't have to," she said. "I'll ... let them know, okay?"

Colin nodded and raised his head. "But what about Link? Do you promise to stay with him and help him?"

"I promise." She felt horrible having to lie to the kid, but there was no way she was going to stick around and go through however many more temples and life-threatening situations that were waiting for Link. Midna would bring back NEVA after the next temple, and then she was going to go home and leave her and Link to it.

"Good," Colin said with a smile. "He's really going to need you."

If he was trying to make Vanna feel worse, he was succeeding. "I know..."

He sighed contentedly. "I'm ready to go, now. Please don't forget what you promised me."

Colin closed his eyes, and he disappeared into the wind.


	15. Brave

For the few days after Link left, Vanna didn't have much to do at all. The first day she mostly spent talking to Zi on the phone, and she occasionally tried and failed to get her mom to respond back to her. In the evening Luda offered to teach her the Hylian alphabet, and Vanna gladly agreed to take her lesson. At night time she walked back and forth on the street, finally stopping at the spring to try to get the Light Spirit to talk to her again before giving up and going back to the little house she had claimed. She checked her phone one last time before laying down to bed, and saw that her mom had finally responded.

_Jaylene went into labor early. Say hello to little Gabriel Matthew Holt! 5lbs 2oz_

She should have been happy to see the text and the picture of her nephew and sister that came with it, but she wasn't. She was just upset that she missed out on being there the day of his birth, and that she wouldn't be able to hold him for however many days it would be until they got that last Fused Shadow. The extra pictures that her mom sent of her, and Vanna's other sister Kalina and her fiancée Ami taking turns holding him only helped to make her more jealous that they all got to be there and she didn't. She had trouble sleeping that night, both because she was too antsy for Link to just come back already so they could get going and she could get home, and because she couldn't stop seeing the image of Colin's ghost in her head.

The Ordonian children were at least somewhat better on the second and third days. Malo, it seemed, had already cried out all of his tears, but Vanna figured it was just because the four-year-old didn't understand the finality of Colin's death. Beth was handling it the worst, understandably. Colin died because he saved her, and it was hard to not see it as her own fault in a grieving state.

Vanna tried to keep their minds occupied by telling them stories about some things from her world—about spacebuses and primitive transportation like cars, and teleporters, like Mr. Rider's TPorts and NEVA, and his Synthumans and the different kinds of them like the Incubots, and little technological gadgets like her phone. They listened to some of the music she had on her phone together, but they didn't seem interested in the music itself as much as the fact that it was coming out of a ' _tiny flat box_.' Vanna completely lost Beth's interest when she showed them her laser gun. She probably should have realized that a little girl mourning the death of a friend might not be impressed by an object that was made to end lives. Talo and Malo enjoyed it, though, and they insisted on her showing them how to shoot it. She obliterated target after target with them outside until it was time for them to eat dinner.

After the kids went to bed that night, Vanna went back outside by herself, back to the spring. During the time she couldn't sleep the night before, she spent plenty of time thinking about what Colin said. ' _Only the brave can see them._ '

"I'm brave, aren't I?"

She fought a giant venom-spitting plant monster, and a giant chain-whipping fire monster. A coward wouldn't do that, would they? A coward wouldn't have even left Ordon.

So what made Link more brave than her? She did all the same things he did, with the exception of when he had to go into the twilight, and that was only because she couldn't follow him without ' _turning into a spirit_ ,' whatever exactly that was supposed to entail.

Vanna voiced her thoughts to the Light Spirit, but if her words reached it, it didn't care to respond. If it was real, then she was convinced it had to be purposefully trying to rile her up by ignoring her. If she wasn't before, she was officially dead set on seeing it if it was the last thing she did.

Just as she was beginning to head back to the house to go to bed, she heard something in the distance. She stood still and listened. It sounded like the trot of multiple horses, but there was also some other squeaking sort of sound with it that she had never heard before and couldn't place. The sounds got closer and closer. They were coming into the village. She was about to run for her life into the Elde Inn, thinking that it had to be more Bulblins riding on their Bullbos, but then she saw that it wasn't. It was two horses being ridden by two people who were still unidentifiable, and the sound she couldn't place was the noise made by the wooden wheels of a wagon that was rolling along behind the horse in the back.

When they got closer, Vanna could see that the horse and its rider at the front were Epona and Link, and behind them was a black horse being ridden by a sizable woman—Ilia, perhaps, she thought, taking into account her portly father and the fact that Uli was the only thin Ordonian woman—who she couldn't get a good look at with the lack of lighting near the village entrance. She walked up next to Link and Epona, and trailed beside them as they came farther into the village.

"Hey, Link," she said.

He peered down at her and gave her a short nod, but said nothing, and then returned his focus to the road ahead. He looked like he was in an even worse mood than he was when he left, somehow. All Vanna knew that he had set out to do was get rid of the twilight in Lanayru, find Ilia, and get a wagon to bring the kids down to Ordon for the funeral. She didn't think that getting the wagon could have been much of an issue, and she was pretty sure he had gotten rid of the twilight in other areas without trouble, so she wondered if Ilia was the problem. Maybe the woman on the horse behind him wasn't Ilia, and he didn't find her in Lanayru like he was hoping.

Link stopped and got off Epona in front of the Elde Inn, and Vanna came to a stop on its porch to wait for him. He walked behind to the back of the woman's wagon as she dismounted. The woman joined her on the porch, and with the firelight from the sconces next to the Elde Inn's doors, Vanna got a better look at her. After managing to tear her eyes away from the woman's chest, she was certain that she wasn't Ilia. She had to be somewhere in her thirties, and she was a Hylian like Link, not a normal human like the rest of the people from Ordon. Even if she was young and round-eared she wouldn't have looked like Bo's daughter, though, with her tan skin, cornrowed red hair, and plump lips. She wouldn't have been that tall in America, but Vanna thought she had to be quite tall in Hyrule, and she was still much taller than her. Vanna's face was nearly level with her cleavage, which only made it harder for her to not stare.

"Hello, young miss," the woman said in an English accent. Vanna never thought it was too weird that Renado and Luda had general American accents while Barnes and the Ordonians sounded Southern, despite the relatively close proximity of Kakariko and Ordon, but it struck her as particularly odd that there were people who had a third, completely different accent in just one country.

Though she had a warm smile on her face, something about standing next to her was ... intimidating. Something.

"Hello," Vanna said back quietly.

She looked behind her, where a girl stepped out of the wagon, and then out came Link. At first Vanna thought he was holding a child wearing strange purple and white clothes in his arms, but then she realized it wasn't clothes that made the child purple and white. The child had purple and white skin if it could be called that, and fins, and gills, and flippers for feet, and a head that pointed up in the back like a fishtail. It was a fish person. Link had told her of fish people in the mines—Zoras, she remembered they were called—but that didn't make it any less weird to see one in real life.

Vanna opened up the left door as Link approached, and the woman held open the right for him to have more room to get through. Link walked in with the girl to his right side, obstructing Vanna's view of what she now presumed to be Ilia. The woman and Vanna let themselves in after them, and Link led the way upstairs to Renado. Beth, Talo, Malo, and Luda were all asleep on beds on one side of the room, so Renado ushered them over to the other end so as to hopefully not disturb them.

"What happened?" Renado asked in a hushed voice as he took the Zora child from Link's arms.

"I found him passed out on the road in Castle Town," the girl responded. She had a Southern drawl, and Vanna could see that she had round ears from where she stood behind her, so she concluded that she had to be Ilia.

"I tried to get a doctor to save him, but he said he couldn't help Zoras," the tall woman said. "I'd heard of you before, and I knew you had to be our only hope."

"I will do everything I can to save him," Renado said.

"And..." the woman looked down at Ilia. "She's lost her memory—can't even remember her own name. Could you help her, too?"

 _That_ explained Link's mood. If she couldn't remember her name, then she more than likely couldn't remember Link, either.

Renado nodded. "I will try, but please let me care for the boy first. It would be much appreciated if you would step out, perhaps to the lobby, so I can have some space. I will come see you once I've done everything necessary for him."

They left Renado with the boy—who Vanna would never have guessed was a boy, given his lack of clothing and lack of anything that would normally let you know when someone's a boy—and went back to the lobby, and it was down there that she finally got to face Ilia. She had short blonde hair, wide-set green eyes, and a very upturned nose. While she wasn't Vanna's type, she supposed she could see how Link could find her to be attractive ... if she was the only girl around his age that he knew up until now ... and she was. Of course he would think she was pretty. Of course he would settle for a fish-eyed pig-nosed girl if he'd never known anything else, anything better.

...Had she always been such a jealous bitch?

Vanna was taken aback by her own cruel thoughts. Ilia saved the Zora boy, and even though Vanna admittedly didn't know Link that well, she knew Ilia had to be a nice girl if he liked her. It wasn't like it even mattered, anyway; she was going to go home soon and never see anyone from Hyrule ever again.

' _Still_ ,' the unjustifiably envious part of her said, ' _she's not even that cute._ '

They sat around a table, and the woman spoke up when they did. "I can't stop wondering why that Zora boy was in Castle Town by himself. They normally stay up by their domain or in Lake Hylia."

Link pursed his lips, then slowly opened them to speak, keeping his eyes on his folded hands. "I know why," he said. "...Zora's Domain was raided by beasts, so the Queen sent him to Hyrule Castle to let Princess Zelda know. That little boy is the Prince of the Zora, Ralis."

"That was him? The Queen must be worried sick..." the woman said.

"Actually... After he left, she..." Link gulped. "The beasts killed her."

Ilia gasped and held a hand over her heart. "That's awful! Oh, Ralis is going to be crushed when he recovers... What about the King? Is he okay?"

"The King's been dead for a few years, now," the woman answered, though the question was directed at Link. "I remember hearing of Princess Zelda traveling up to Zora's Domain to extend her condolences to the Queen and Prince. She'd just recently been orphaned after losing her own mother, so it was the talk of the town. Looks like she's got a lot in common with Prince Ralis, now, both losing their parents young and having to rule their people alone..."

"How old is Princess Zelda?" Vanna asked. At the look she got from the woman that seemed to say ' _How don't you know?_ ' she tacked on, "I'm not from Hyrule."

"Ah, right—Ordonian, aren't you? Princess Zelda just celebrated her twentieth this year."

She didn't particularly care about correcting her, not when she knew that it was probably going to be the last time she saw her, but she wouldn't have had the chance to even if she wanted to. Footsteps raced noisily down the creaky wooden staircase and over to the table.

" _Ilia!_ " Beth said, throwing herself at the older girl. "Ilia, Ilia, Ilia! You're here!"

Ilia's eyes were wide, and she seemed too distraught to do much else than stare at Beth in confusion. When Ilia didn't return her hug, staying stiff as a board, Beth pulled away and looked at her. She was just as confused as Ilia.

"Ilia can't remember anything right now," Link said.

Beth's face fell even more as she stared into Ilia's eyes and continued to get no recognition from her. "You don't remember me?"

"N-no, I don't," Ilia said. "I'm sorry..."

"But it's me! Beth!"

"Beth," Link said. Once he got her attention, he motioned with his finger for her to come over to him, and she did. He put his hands on her shoulders and spoke to her quietly. "Renado's gonna help her get her memory back. Don't worry about her. Just go back to bed, okay?"

Beth looked over at Ilia one last time before sighing and nodding. "Okay... But I'm going to get a drink first."

Link let go of Beth, and she sauntered off to the kitchen with her head down. Ilia put her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, whispering that she just wanted to lay down already. The woman told her to try to stay awake for a while longer, that she could sleep after being seen by Renado. After Beth went back upstairs, it became uncomfortably silent in the lobby, just like it had been the other night at dinner with Link, Renado, and Luda.

Vanna cleared her throat and stood. "Well, I'm going to step outside for a bit."

She wasn't sure how to get Midna's attention without saying her name, so she just tapped her foot on Link's shadow as inconspicuously as she could and hoped that would get her to hop over into her shadow. Once she saw a flicker of black on the ground, she walked outside. Midna showed herself as soon as Vanna shut the door behind her. Vanna walked a distance away from the Elde Inn so that Ilia and the woman wouldn't hear her talking to Midna and think she was talking to herself.

"Give me the rundown. What happened in Lanayru?" Vanna said.

"Well, you already know just about everything. Link saw Queen Rutela's ghost, cleared the twilight, found Ilia in Castle Town and she couldn't remember him, and that boy was dying, so the lady told Link to take them to Kakariko. Pretty boring, but I think there was a slight fiasco with some monsters on the way here. I don't know. I slept through a lot of it." Midna shrugged. "But anyway, Link's planning on using the wagon in the morning to take all the kids down to Ordon for Colin's funeral, and then he probably won't want to do anything but mope around for a while..."

Vanna groaned. "I get that he's upset and all, but I _want to go home._ There has to be _something_ we can do to convince him to just come with us for a little while. We only have one more temple to go through."

"Actually, I have a plan of my own on my mind." It was hard to see it with her being a shadow in the dark of night, but she wore her signature mischievous grin.

"And just what would that be?" Vanna asked, knowing already that she wouldn't like it.

"We go by ourselves!" Midna said, enthusiastically throwing her hands out in the air beside her.

If they were in an old TV show, the crickets would have started chirping right about then. "...Funny."

Midna huffed and crossed her arms. "I'm not joking, you idiot. Think about it. Who knows how long Link will be mopey for? I couldn't even get him to leave the kids for a week, and that was before one of them died, so imagine how long he'll want to be with them now. If we go by ourselves, you might even be able to be back home by tomorrow night, if you're really quick finishing up Lakebed Temple."

Vanna was tempted to say yes, right up until she said _Lakebed Temple_ and reminded her that getting the Fused Shadows wasn't as easy as just showing up someplace and grabbing it. No, there'd be puzzles to solve and monsters to fight, ending with a battle against a giant boss, and in the case of Lakebed Temple, she already knew from Zi that the boss was Morpheel. _Eel_. A giant eel, in Lakebed. She was _not_ fighting a giant eel at the bottom of a lake.

But she didn't want to stay, either. She just wanted to go home and take a steaming shower and then curl up in her comfortable bed with her dog in her arms and go to sleep, and hopefully forget that she had ever even left it the morning of September 1st.

"Midna. You were there in the mines when I fell into the water..." Vanna trailed off, hoping she wouldn't have to actually admit what she was thinking.

"I know you can't swim." Despite the fact that she was right, Vanna immediately felt defensive because Midna said it. "But Queen Rutela told Link that she'd give him something so he could swim and breathe in deep water like a Zora if he'd save Ralis for her. Link's not going to need it while he's in Ordon. I'm sure he won't mind you borrowing it."

Vanna was wary to believe that there was anything, even something in a world of magic, that would allow her to swim and breathe underwater. "I'll have to see what it is first before I'll consider putting my life on the line. If I don't believe it'll do what you say, then we're waiting for Link."

"Come on, Vanna. You don't need him. You're brave enough to go on your own, aren't you?"

She grimaced. The answer was _no_ and she knew it. However, she wasn't going to admit that, either, so she deflected the question. "You seem very happy about getting to spend time alone with me even though you hate me."

"True," Midna said with a tilt of her head. "But you should be glad I am, because there's only _one_ something, not two. It's either you or Link, and if it's not you, guess what you're not getting back?"

Vanna's hands curled up into fists at her sides. She wanted to dropkick that little bitch to the moon. It was bad enough that she was being forced to do everything with Link for her when _Midna_ was the one that owed _her_ , but having to do everything without any help at all was going too far. She was so angered by her that all she could do was stand there and glare at her, unable to articulate her whirlwind of frustrated thoughts into anything vaguely coherent.

" _I_ think it's fair," Midna went on. "Link's had to clear the twilight multiple times now while you did nothing to help him."

"That was because I _couldn't!_ " Vanna lashed out, raking her hands through the roots of her hair.

"Yeah, and now one of you can't clear Lakebed Temple, so it's your turn to even the workload out. Besides... You can see yourself how devastated Link is. He'd really appreciate any help he can get, you know. But hey, it's your choice. If you want to be stuck in Hyrule forever..." Midna crossed her legs and put her arms behind her head in a relaxed pose, still giving Vanna that god damned grin that she wanted to smack off her face.

Vanna knew that Mr. Rider was still working on making the new NEVAs so Zi could come get her. If she didn't clear Lakebed Temple alone, she could just wait for him to finish them, but there were two problems with that. One, she had no idea how long it would take for him to finish, and two, she didn't know if it would even work. The only reason she managed to get to Hyrule in the first place was that her NEVA malfunctioned. What was to say that that malfunction could be replicated in the new copies?

She had two choices, and neither were foolproof. She could wait for Mr. Rider, with the good outcome being that she could eventually return home and the bad outcome being that she would be stuck in Hyrule forever, or she could go to Lakebed Temple alone, with the good outcome being that she could get home by tomorrow and the bad outcome being that she would die. When she looked at the pros and cons like that, it seemed simple, but it really wasn't. If she decided to wait for Mr. Rider and got stuck in Hyrule, she would never be able to forgive herself for not taking Midna up on her offer. She couldn't just miss what could easily be her only chance to leave because she was scared.

"I hate you," Vanna said under her breath.

"Is that a yes?" Midna asked in a sing-song voice.

" _Yes,_ it's a yes!" Vanna turned around and stomped back to the Elde Inn.

She was halfway up the porch's ramp when the doors opened, and out came Link, Ilia, and the woman. She tried her hardest to not show her anger on her face, but it was noticed anyway.

"Are you all right, honey?" the woman asked.

She nodded, and quickly came up with a lie. "Just got a letter from the postman. I'd rather not talk about it."

Vanna's lie seemed good enough for her. "It was getting quite stuffy inside. We thought it best to come join you for some fresh air."

They all relaxed along the porch, and again silence reigned. It was nearly an hour later that Renado joined them outside. Link, Ilia, and Vanna stood from where they had taken seats.

"How is he?" Ilia eagerly asked.

"He has passed through the worst of it. As long as he rests, he should recover in due time," Renado answered.

Ilia grinned widely and looked at Link. He smiled back, but Vanna could see the sadness in his eyes as he looked at her.

"Do you know the fate of his mother?" Renado asked. The question visibly sent a shock through Link, and his smile fell. "Her welfare consumes him. Since he started to regain consciousness, he has been mumbling deliriously about her almost constantly."

Vanna watched Link to see if he would respond. It was upsetting knowing that this young boy's mother had been murdered, but Link looked absolutely _heartbroken_ by it.

"...I can see the knowledge grieves you," Renado said. "It must be an awful memory."

Though she hadn't been there with Link, Renado's statement almost made Vanna roll her eyes. It wasn't like Link watched her get murdered. Seeing a ghost wasn't _that_ awful.

She frowned when she thought of reasons why Link looked to take it so hard. Maybe he was upset because she was another person he couldn't save, and he felt guilty. Maybe he was upset because it reopened his own wounds, reminding him of how he felt when he lost his mother.

Or maybe Link was just a bigger softie than she imagined and her assumption of anything else was because she didn't understand how someone could possibly be so empathetic.

Renado turned to Ilia. "Regaining your memory will not be simple, but I am certain that if we just give you some time, you will find your heart again."

"There's nothing you can do to speed up the process?" Ilia asked.

"I'd like to study my books, and see if I could find ways to speed up the process. Until I find something, all we can do is show you pieces of your past, and hope that eventually a piece will be the one to bring your memories back. If you would not mind, I would like you to stay here to recover."

"I don't mind," Ilia said, beginning to yawn in the middle of her sentence. "Is there a bed I can sleep in, here?"

"Go to the room upstairs, and choose any bed you would like. I have my daughter awake up there right now looking over the Zora boy; feel free to talk to her if you need anything. If you need me, I will be in the sanctuary at the end of the town, by the spring."

Ilia walked inside, and Renado walked away. The woman sighed and smiled, resting back against the railing.

"Nice to see there's still hope here. And it's always good to see happy results repay your efforts. Link... Any chance you're of the mind to put those skills of yours to use for Hyrule?" she said. Link raised an eyebrow at her. "What hope there is in our kingdom is frail and dying ... but there's still a group trying to do what it can. And I'm a member of that group."

She walked to stand in front of him, leaning forward a bit and outstretching her hand. "Call me Telma."

Link looked down, his eyes lingering for just a bit too long, and it took everything Vanna had in her not to snort—not that she could blame him. He shook her hand, and when he let go, Telma looked at Vanna. She reached out to her, then, and she gave her a handshake.

"What's your name?" she asked.

"Vanna."

"And you two are friends?"

She looked over at Link for a second. She wasn't too sure they could be called friends, considering how little they knew about each other, but she told Telma that they were friends anyway, and Link didn't object.

"I meant to ask you something earlier, Telma," Link said. "Could I borrow your wagon in the morning? I could have it back the day after tomorrow..."

Telma rested her arms on the railing again. "Sure. I was planning on staying here just a bit longer, anyway. I'm still worried about Ilia, and... Well, never mind about the rest."

She looked down the village, and Link and Vanna followed her eyes to see what she was looking at. Renado still hadn't reached the sanctuary, and she was staring at him with a sultry smile.

Vanna had already looked back by the time she approached Link again, but Link was surprised to turn back around and see her standing there in front of him leaning over with her hands on her hips. "I want to see you at my bar again, you hear me?" She stood up straight after Link nodded. "The bar is actually a kind of safe house for my friends. There's a passageway that leads to the castle from in there, as well."

Telma started to walk away toward Renado, nearly skipping as she did, before stopping and turning around to say something more. "If you ever need anything, stop by. I'll be waiting for you, honey!"

She winked at Link, then started on her way again. Vanna couldn't help but laugh a little as she saw Link's dropped jaw and blushing cheeks.


	16. To Lake Hylia

"So," Vanna said to Link once Telma and Renado had made it inside the sanctuary, "Midna told me about Queen Rutela giving you some sort of gift if you saved Ralis. Do you need to go back up to Zora's Domain to get it?"

Link only got the word "I" out before his eyes trailed behind Vanna and his sentence was cut short. She looked over her shoulder to see what he was looking at. Vanna had never seen her before, but she knew the apparition floating behind her in the road had to be exactly who she had just been talking about, Queen Rutela. Like her son, she wore nothing but golden jewelry, but the way her pink-white fins cascaded around her hips and down her legs made it seem almost like she was wearing a long skirt at first glance. Her hair, if it could be called that, reminded Vanna of jellyfish tendrils. Both her hair and fins swayed in the breeze as she began to slowly float down the road.

Link followed her, and after considering it for a moment, Vanna trailed along behind him. She assumed Rutela had to be leading them down to the spring, since the only other place to go that she knew of was out to the field, but instead Rutela went behind the sanctuary. Vanna had noticed there was room to walk around it, but she didn't think that there was actually anything back there, so she was confused at first why Rutela went that way. It turned out there was a pathway hidden back there, and following it led them to a small enclosed graveyard.

At the back of the graveyard was stone featuring a mark shaped like one of the jewels Rutela and Ralis wore. Rutela's form passed right through it, and after she did, it glowed a bright turquoise before fading away to reveal a small hole behind it. As Link crawled through, Vanna changed her mind about following him. If Rutela was taking him so far out of the way, she probably wanted to talk to him alone. Still, though, Vanna was nosy, so she got down on the ground and peeked in through the hole. She could see Link standing in a smaller enclosure, and she could just barely see the bottom of Rutela's fins floating in front of him.

They were still close enough that Vanna could hear Rutela's words. She thanked him for bringing Ralis to Kakariko Village and told him that the Zora people were buried in the graveyard, including her husband. Her husband made garments for ' _the Chosen Hero_ ' that housed the abilities of the Zora, and she urged Link to take them. She asked Link to tell Ralis to not grieve her, to be brave and live on as the Zora King. Her voice got quieter as she instructed Link to tell Ralis that she loved him, and then it disappeared entirely and her body vanished.

With her gone, Vanna crawled in through the narrow tunnel. She was stunned by how beautiful the alcove was. Clear water separated the ground she was on from where a soaking Link was standing. A large stone was on the slice of land with Link, and on either side of the ground, there were waterfalls that almost looked to glow as they flowed down past the vines and branches growing over the earthen walls. She wished she could have come back to the scenic hideaway during her time in the village that she had nothing else to do—until she realized the stone Link was standing in front of was probably the gravestone of a Zora, judging by its fin-like design and placement at the back of a graveyard.

Link turned around, holding the folded set of clothes in his hands. He placed the outfit in his pouch before jumping into the water and swimming over to join Vanna. Midna came up out of her shadow.

"Do you think you're going to use those clothes while you're down in Ordon?" Midna asked.

Link's face looked blank as he replied in monotone, "I'm going for a funeral, not a swim."

"So, can Vanna borrow them for a while?"

Link looked at Vanna, and she looked at Midna. She didn't think Midna was going to ask him for her.

"I'm staying here with Vanna while you go down to Ordon," Midna explained. "Vanna needs to learn how to swim before the three of us go to Lakebed Temple, and I thought it'd be fun for me and Vanna to have some girl time together. Isn't that right, Vanna?" She smiled at her.

Vanna had to fight back to make her face not contort in disgust, and it was just as hard to hide the disgust in her voice. "Yeah..."

"Okay," Link said slowly, an eyebrow raised. He took the outfit from his pouch and handed it over to her. "You two have fun, then... I'm goin' to bed."

Link crawled through the tunnel, and after a few moments Vanna crouched down and looked through just to make sure he was gone. Once she saw him exit the cemetery, she stood back up and faced Midna.

"Why were you trying to keep it a secret that we're going to Lakebed Temple together without him?" she asked.

"When we were in Castle Town, they tried putting the wagon on Epona, but she hated it, so Link's going to have to take Telma's horse and leave Epona behind. I don't think Link would like it very much if he knew that you're going to ride his horse to Lake Hylia without him when you know nothing about horses."

Vanna stared at her in disbelief. "You didn't want him to know because you want me to _steal his horse?_ " she whispered, just in case.

Midna's one visible eye rolled. "I believe the word you're looking for is _borrow_."

"You just said yourself I don't know anything about horses! How do you expect me to know how to control her?"

"You're going to have to figure that out yourself, aren't you?" she said, crossing her arms. She interrupted Vanna after just one word. "You _need_ Epona, unless you want to go all the way across Hyrule Field entirely on foot. That would take forever, and you know that you don't want to wait longer than necessary to get that last Fused Shadow."

Vanna tried to think of something else, but all that came to mind at first was just how much she wanted to punch herself for not taking her TPort with her. The thought of teleporting then reminded her of something else. "Can't you just warp us to Lakebed Temple with a portal?"

"No. You can't warp through the portals. You'll get stuck in the twilight."

Her eyes narrowed; Midna had to be lying to her. "You warped me out of the temples through portals when we finished them."

"Those were just quick short distance portals that didn't actually have to bring you through the twilight and out through a different portal. Trust me, I _wish_ we could just warp to Lake Hylia. Even with Epona it's still going to take hours to get there."

Again, Vanna's face contorted. She'd have to ride a horse for hours when she knew nothing about horses, to a place she didn't know the location of, with Midna pestering her all the way there, and then after that she'd have to go into an underwater temple with no help to speak of. She groaned and threw her head back. "Just kill me."

* * *

When Vanna woke up in the morning, she headed over to the Elde Inn. Ilia, Telma, Renado, and Luda were eating breakfast together in the lobby, and they offered for her to join them. She told them she would in just a moment, and she went upstairs.

While laying in bed at night trying to get to sleep, imagining how going to Lakebed Temple would be, she had realized that she only had her sword and gun. Link had the bow and arrows, the metal shield she had gotten, her lantern, the magic wind boomerang, and the iron boots. She didn't think the boomerang or the boots would be of too much use to her, considering she didn't have the magic necessary to control the boomerang how Link did, and she apparently didn't need the boots to stick to magnets anyway, but she knew she would feel safer having them just in case. She wanted to be as prepared as possible for the temple, and Link probably wouldn't need any of those things if he was just going to Ordon. He could survive for a while with just his sword and wooden shield. At least, that's what Vanna told herself as she sneaked up to him while he slept and she plucked what she wanted from his pouch.

Over the course of the next hour or so, the Ordonian children trickled downstairs one by one, and Link was the last person to join all of them. After Link finished eating, he went over with Renado and Telma to have a discussion about the best way to transport everyone down to Ordon, which Vanna listened to. They figured it likely that nobody would be thrilled about sitting in a wagon for five hours with Colin's rotting corpse, which led to the resolution that Link would take one trip to drop off the four living Ordonians, then come back to get Colin and bring him down. Renado was concerned about the lengthiness of the multiple trips, but Link insisted he would be okay. Vanna, on the other hand, was also somewhat worried about it, because if Link was coming back so soon for his second trip, that meant he would notice without a doubt that she had taken Epona. She supposed though that it wouldn't matter, really, because it would be too late by the time he found out for him to do anything about it.

Telma said Link could stay down there with her wagon for a few days if he wanted, and Renado reminded Link to bring Ilia with him upon returning. With the plan finalized, everyone went outside. As the kids and Ilia were saying their goodbyes to everyone not going with them, it hit Vanna that this would be her last time seeing Link. She got him to come over to the side with her.

"I don't really know how to say this, but I guess I just wanted to thank you for ... well, everything, I guess," she said. "Being so nice to me even when I kinda broke into your house, and letting me stay there while you were gone, and saving me from that giant rock up on the mountain, and just saving me in general from all of the crazy stuff in this world."

"Like that _crazy_ water in the Goron Mines that tried to kill you," Midna piped up from in her shadow.

Link chuckled at her comment, and though Vanna was slightly embarrassed by it at first, she ended up chuckling, too, after seeing Link's smile. "Really, though," she said. "Thanks."

"You're welcome," Link said. His smile faded away. "But why are you thanking me right now? You're makin' it sound like you're gonna leave..."

She knew it probably seemed like a suspicious time to thank him. Her hopes that he wouldn't catch on had been broken. Rather than telling him about Midna's plans, she had to come up with something else. "Well... Mr. Rider is working on new NEVAs so Zi can come get me, so I could be going home at any time," she said. It was technically true, but she doubted that they would be done before she was done with Lakebed Temple.

"Oh, really? You never told me about either of those people, aside from bringing up that Zi person once. I had no idea..."

Vanna was somewhat shocked at first to have it brought to her attention that she had never told Link about them, but then she figured it made sense considering how much of their time together was spent focusing on temples. "Zi is Mr. Rider's son and my best friend, and Mr. Rider is the man who invented NEVA and gave it to me for me to test out. I've been communicating with them since I got here using my ... _music-listening picture-taking thing_ , or _phone_ as it's really called. Last I checked, the new NEVAs were about half done."

"So this could be my last time seeing you," Link said. She nodded, and he briefly looked over his shoulder to the wagon that the Ordonians were starting to get situated inside of. "If it is, then I guess I oughta thank you, too. It was real nice not having to go through the Forest Temple and all up the mountains and into the Goron Mines by myself. I probably would have died in the mines if you hadn't been there to get me out, so ... thanks for saving me, too."

"Come on, Link!" Beth called.

They looked at the wagon again, and when Link looked back at Vanna, without even thinking about it, she put a hand on his shoulder and leaned forward to kiss his cheek. What she was doing dawned on her the second her lips touched him. She quickly pulled away. His cheeks and ears were turning pink, and his eyebrows were raised in surprise. Her own cheeks started to blush.

Again, her mind raced to come up with a lie. "I-it's customary, in America, to—to kiss people on the cheek, after they thank you," she said. She started playing with her fingers nervously. "Guess you've never heard of people doing that...?"

"We don't do that down in Ordon... Maybe people in other places in Hyrule do?" Link said, his hand reaching up to rub the nape of his neck. "But, uh, I gotta go, now..."

"One last thing. Colin," Vanna said. "You know how much he loved you, and everyone else. You need to tell them. Especially his parents."

Link frowned again, and he dropped his hand and nodded. "I will. Goodbye, Vanna."

"Goodbye, Link."

He walked over to the wagon, and after making sure everyone was all ready to go, he got on Telma's horse and took off. Watching them leave felt almost bittersweet, but more than anything Vanna felt self-loathing. It was bad enough that she had to go and make her last moment together with Link awkward, but that lie was just about the _dumbest_ thing she had ever come up with. Why hadn't she just said it was customary to kiss people on the cheek when saying _goodbye?_ Again, she supposed it was something that ultimately didn't matter—an awkward kiss on the cheek wouldn't make things more awkward between them in the future, because they had no future together at all, but she still couldn't stop beating herself up over it.

Then, of course, Midna had to come up out of her shadow after everyone was gone and make fun of her for it. "Aww!" she giggled. "Wasn't that just so _sweet_ of you to give him a little kiss?"

" _Shut up_ ," Vanna grumbled under her breath, rolling her eyes. "I think we should wait awhile before leaving so Link can't look back and see me on Epona in the field."

"Why don't you take some time to practice riding her back and forth in the village before we leave, then?" Midna suggested.

With a nod, Vanna walked over to Epona, and Midna floated along behind her. It was as she got right next to the horse that she remembered how much of an ordeal it had been trying to get up on her even while Link was on her and holding Vanna's hand for support. It was so much easier when he had lifted her up. She held onto the saddle instead while she tried to get on, but she couldn't get her right leg over. Epona was just too tall.

"This is hilarious, but also kind of sad," Midna commented from behind her.

Vanna huffed and glared back at her. "I'm sorry we can't all just levitate around wherever we want," she said before turning her attention back to trying to mount Epona.

"You could just walk onto the porch she's standing next to and get on from there."

That was definitely a better idea. She silently walked onto the porch and climbed up onto the fence, and from there it was easy enough to hike her dress up and stretch her leg over Epona's back. Epona whipped her head back and neighed loudly when Vanna settled onto her. She shushed her, though it did nothing to stop her. She was making it seem like Vanna was trying to murder her when all she was doing was sitting on her.

"I've ridden on you before! Stop freaking out!" Vanna said.

She tried petting Epona's neck in an attempt to calm her down, but it only seemed to make her more aggravated, so she stopped and sat on her completely still and silent. Epona slowly got over her tantrum by herself.

"Okay," Vanna said gently, petting her again, "we're going to go, okay, girl?"

"Whenever you decide to leave, go through the southern exit, and then take a straight shot west across the field. I'll help you find the lake once we get close," Midna said before retreating into her shadow.

"All right." She nodded and grabbed the reins, and she softly kicked Epona's flanks with both of her heels. "Go."

She didn't go, so Vanna did it again, but not quite as soft with the kick. Epona still didn't go, but she was scared to kick her any harder, even though she knew horses were tough. She thought back to what Link had done to make her start going. He had kicked her just like Vanna did the last time she saw him make her go, but the time they rode her together he made a noise at the same time. Vanna kicked Epona again as she mimicked the noise Link had made, and then Epona took off at a snail's pace. Though she appreciated her going slow as she learned how to ride, Vanna felt like she was only doing it to taunt her, and she worried that Epona was going to continue going just as slow when it was time to leave. At the rate she was walking at, Vanna could get to the lake faster on her own two feet.

It was hard getting Epona to turn around at the ends of the village at first, but she responded better with every lap they took. She started to run when Vanna kicked her again, and she made her go a few more laps at her higher speed before leaving out into the field. Upon realizing that the wagon was still within sight, albeit far away and headed in a different direction, Vanna kicked Epona again to make her go even faster. If Link noticed them, there was no way he was catching up with them.

With every stride Epona took, Vanna's body bounced up and down on the saddle, and she smiled widely as she took in the sight of the vast field. Walking around in Ordon and Kakariko by herself was like nothing compared to how freeing it was to ride Epona across the plains. It was scary, sure—exceptionally so when she noticed some monsters roaming about in the distance—but a little bit of fright was worth it to have the most liberating experience of her life. She giggled as she thought about how infuriated her mom would be to know that she was riding a horse by herself in a field with monsters.

"What's funny?" Midna asked, not bothering to show herself.

"Nothing, really. It's just... My mom would _kill_ me if she knew what I was doing right now."

Midna hummed, but didn't respond further than that, which Vanna was grateful for. Talkative as she was, she wasn't in the mood to hold a conversation with her when they were going to be stuck together for hours and hours, and she enjoyed having Epona's hooves racing along the ground and the wind blowing against her being the only sounds she heard. After Epona barreled right through the first monster on the field without a problem, Vanna started to relax more. She just had to try her hardest to focus on not thinking about what was waiting for her at the bottom of a lake.

* * *

"I am _not_ fucking jumping off this bridge!"

Hours later, and after much trouble getting Epona to stop running, they were finally at the lake. Not right before the water, though, no—they were on a bridge high above the lake, and the only way to get into the water was to jump off.

"Oh, stop being such a baby," Midna said. "The outfit Link gave you will make it easy for you to swim and impossible for you to drown. You'll be fine."

"I won't get the chance to drown if I die as soon as I hit the water! That lake is like two hundred feet down! There's no way I can survive that!"

"Link jumped down into the lake off this bridge, and he survived. And the lake was basically a puddle when he jumped down into it. You. Will. Be. _Fine_. Just put on the armor and make a leap. Close your eyes if you have to." Midna went back down into Vanna's shadow, her way of saying that the conversation about jumping was over.

Part of Vanna thought that Midna was lying so that she'd jump down and break her neck, and then Midna wouldn't have to deal with her any longer. She made a noise somewhere between a groan and a whine as she got into her pouch and retrieved the outfit. She sat it on top of the thick safety wall of the bridge, and reached down to grab the hem of her dress.

"...Do you _have_ to stay in my shadow while I get changed?" Vanna said.

"What's wrong with me being in your shadow while you get changed?" Midna asked.

"Hmm, maybe I _don't_ want you down there looking up at me while I'm getting dressed?"

"I don't know if you realize this or not, but it's really dark in your shadow. So dark I can't see, in fact."

In hindsight, Vanna probably should have realized that herself. "Oh..."

"And I wouldn't want to look at your naked pale ass anyway."

Vanna shot Midna a glare that she couldn't see, then looked down the bridge both ways. Monsters aside, she hadn't seen a single soul on the way out there, but she wanted to make sure nobody was nearby anyway as she quickly stripped out of her clothes. She struggled trying to figure out which part of the Zora outfit was supposed to go where. Once she figured it out, most of it looked big on her. She couldn't even end up wearing the calf, arm, or thigh pieces because they just wouldn't stay on. The only parts that fit her okay were the wetsuit (which she assumed had to be because of some magic spell, because it formed to her body perfectly), hip pieces, the helmet, and the hood with a dangling tail. The hood was the same material as the wetsuit, forming to the contours of her face like magic. She could breathe just fine despite the fabric covering her nose and mouth, so she assumed—hoped—that it and the wetsuit were really the only things needed to grant her the abilities Queen Rutela boasted.

She climbed up on the wall, adjusting the flippers on her feet again after she got up. Looking down at the water, she felt like she may as well have been holding a knife against her throat to slash it. Multiple times she told herself that she would jump on three, but chickened out when she got to it.

"You're lucky I'm just a shadow and I can't push you off..." Midna said.

Vanna ignored her. If she was going to risk her life, she was going to do it at her own pace. The longer she stood there staring, though, the more she worked herself up. She told herself repeatedly that she had to do it eventually; she was just delaying the inevitable.

She took in a deep breath and jumped.


	17. Submerged

Back in America, the most ' _dangerous_ ' thing Vanna ever did, and ever enjoyed doing, was getting on roller coasters. With the advancement of technology, roller coaster accidents had become more and more scarce to the point that they were almost unheard of in the present day, so she saw no reason to be scared of them. Still, others would scream for the entire duration of the rides, and she found it peculiar that they did. One time when they were at an amusement park together, she asked Zi why he screamed, and he told her it was the feeling of falling, because it brought with it the worry of danger that he just couldn't shake off.

She didn't understand until she was falling from the bridge, a scream ripping through her throat louder than any noise she had ever made. After an eternity of falling, she crashed into the water. She swam up as soon as she could, wondering how in the world she was still alive. Her fingers hastily reached up to pull down the material that covered her mouth and nose, allowing her mouth to fall open to take in bigger breaths. Her entire body trembled, partially from the fear that still lingered within her, but the real culprit was the water. It was _freezing_. She should have expected as much; she knew that the lake in Ordon and the spring in Kakariko were cool, and that it was getting colder out in the nights and mornings, and she had noticed on the ride to the lake that some leaves were starting to turn red and that the grass wasn't quite as green, yet she hadn't thought at all about how the quickly approaching fall would affect the temperature of the lake.

As if this whole scenario wasn't already bad enough. She hated swimming, she hated having to risk her life, she hated having nobody there to help her, and she absolutely hated the cold. She always swore that she felt any non-mild temperature right through to her bones, and the cold was by far the least bearable. Her family and friends always told her she was being dramatic when she complained about it, but she was telling the truth. The cold gnawed right through to her core, and even with the wetsuit helping the areas it covered, she knew that she would be shivering in no time. If given the choice, she would have taken the blistering heat of the mines over the chilled water in an instant.

"Now, that wasn't so bad, was it?"

The sound of Midna's voice reminded Vanna that she still hadn't opened her eyes. When she blinked them open, Midna was hovering just above the water's surface. " _Yes_ , it was."

"Oh, really? Hm. You could have walked down to the lake from a path over there," Midna said, pointing her finger.

Vanna looked to where she pointed. There was a narrow outcropping along the rocks that shot all the way around the lake up to the field, leading down to the patch of land that stretched the southern edge of the lake. "Why didn't you say that was there earlier instead of making me _jump off a bridge?!_ "

"Because I wanted to watch you jump off a bridge. Anyway, temple's down there, so get going. You should probably put those flippers back on, too."

Midna disappeared, leaving Vanna seething in anger by herself. She was fully convinced Midna did want her to die, and at that point, the feeling was mutual. Midna had said Vanna was the one lucky that she was just a shadow, but _she_ was really the one that was lucky, because if she wasn't a shadow then Vanna would've drowned her in the lake. The thought of pinning her under was momentarily relieving, but then Vanna realized that in that situation she'd only be hurting herself more. If Midna died, the chances Vanna would ever get back home would be lowered drastically, maybe even entirely for all she knew. As much as she hated it, she needed Midna.

She just didn't need her sass. As Vanna retrieved the flippers that had come off her feet sometime after her jump, she informed Midna that she'd be practicing her swimming for a while before going down, and that she would only leave when she was ready, not at Midna's command. Midna wasn't happy about it, but for once, Vanna thought Midna knew that she wasn't going to bend for her. She took it as a small personal victory.

If the outfit truly helped her swim just like a Zora, then the Zoras had to be the least graceful aquatic species ever. She wondered if it was because she didn't have the full outfit on, or if she was just so bad at swimming in the first place that it could only do so much, or a combination of both. Despite it not making her swim exactly how she hoped, it still helped her immensely, somehow. She almost didn't feel like herself swimming around in it. It felt especially strange when she started practicing swimming around while completely submerged, not just because of it being something she'd never really done before, but because she could still breathe as if she were on land.

Vanna swam all over the lake for practice, trying her hardest to distract herself with the calming scenery. When she was as comfortable with swimming as she thought possible—which is to say, not very—she began to swim downward. The deeper she went, the more she felt the water pressure increase, and the harder she found it to force herself to swim farther. The idea of using the iron boots to make herself sink down popped into her head, and immediately she took her pouch off and brought it around in front of her so she could make sure nothing else slipped out into the water. She opened up its flap, and found that there seemed to be some sort of magic barrier over the top of it, not letting any water inside. After pulling just one boot out and replacing a flipper with it, Vanna immediately began to be weighed down, and the addition of the second boot sped up her descent.

As she sunk down, the necklace that went with the armor floated up in front of her face. The pendant was glowing the same bright cyan as the waterfalls where Queen Rutela left the world. Vanna doubted it would manage to slip off her head with the headgear she had on, but she reached up to hold it in her hand just in case. It felt like water was swirling inside the glowing gems. She tried to focus on the sensation of it rather than how rapidly she was approaching the temple.

Her fears were slightly alleviated by the sight of several Zoras swimming around near what she could tell had to be the entrance to the temple. If something were to happen to her, they could probably help bring her to safety, given she could get to them in time. The sight of them also confirmed to her that she absolutely was not swimming like a Zora. Most of the Zoras were swimming in place, but one was gracefully swimming all over in an underwater version of figure eights.

Vanna came to a stop at the bottom of the lake with a muted thunk, and then she took the boots off and put the flippers back on. Two Zoras were guarding a hole that had been blocked off with rocks, which she presumed to be where she would swim inside from. She hesitated swimming up to the Zoras to talk to them about letting her in. She knew from the start that there would be water inside of the temple, but it hit her just then that it would more than likely be filled with nothing but water, and following that, it would be completely dark. She'd have to rely on either her phone's light, which would come at the cost of not getting to use one of her hands, or she'd have to rely on only what little light the pendant gave off. She looked to the surface high above her, wondering if and worrying that it would be the last time she'd ever see the light of the sun again.

Ignoring every part of her brain screaming at her to go back up, to trust in Mr. Rider's ability to get her home, she swam over to the Zoras. She had made it this far; Vanna couldn't handle the shame of proving that she was the cowardly quitter Midna thought she was.

"Sir!" said one of the Zoras.

 _Sir?_ Vanna knew the scale-covered armor didn't lend very well to her body with its lack of shape, but she thought she should have been recognizable as a _miss_ anyway. In all fairness, she couldn't tell if the Zoras she was looking at were male or female, either, so she couldn't blame them too much. Beyond a few minor differences in the markings and colorings of the Zoras, they looked very similar to one another, and very androgynous, with a mix of soft curves and defined abs. She tried to determine what they were with the image of the queen in her mind, but she had no idea if the ones she was looking at had fish pecs or fish breasts that were smaller than the queen's. Apparently that was just life in Hyrule.

"You wear the garb of the Hero in my people's legends! Are you, perhaps...?" it said.

There was an explanation for her being called sir, aside from them not knowing enough about humans to be able to easily differentiate between men and women. If the hero from their legends was a man, and she was wearing his clothes, it was a reasonable enough assumption to make, though Vanna still held that she looked like a girl regardless. She decided to go along with it instead of explaining that she had just borrowed the hero's outfit, thinking that they would be more likely to let her inside their temple if they thought she was ' _the Hero_.' She responded a muffled, "Yeah, I'm the Hero. I'm here to save your people from the dangers in the temple."

The two Zoras looked happy to hear that she was the Hero, but their enthusiasm drained away quickly and was replaced with horror.

"The temple has been overrun by monsters. They are _everywhere_ in there," one of them said.

"We've already done all we could and sealed them in so they can't bring darkness to others. It is simply too dangerous inside. I must ask that you turn back," said the other.

That seemed like the perfect excuse to leave, yet Vanna knew Midna wouldn't care and would want her to fight back to be let in. "Well... I'm here on orders from Prince Ralis. If you don't let me in..."

Her open-ended not-really-a-threat threat worked. The two Zoras guarding the entrance quickly discussed the best way to clear the entrance of the rocks that obstructed it, and decided to ask another nearby Zora who made water bombs to let them use one to blow it open. Vanna backed away from the entrance when they and the bomb maker came over with a bomb, and after it was placed, they backed away as well. Seconds later, the bomb detonated, clearing all the rocks from the opening.

' _Claustrophobia_ ' wasn't a word that Vanna had ever thought applied to her, but seeing the cleared entrance made her begin to rethink how she felt about small spaces.

She looked up to the surface just one last time before starting to swim into the hole. If there was one good thing about being underwater, it was the fact that at least Midna couldn't tell that she was crying. Her heartbeat was thundering louder in her ears with every stroke forward. She briefly considered asking one of the Zoras to come along with her; it would help just having one of them there next to her, even if they didn't help her fight or anything. But Vanna was certain that Midna would not approve of her asking for someone to go with them, and judging by how adamant the Zoras had been that the temple was too dangerous to enter, they probably wouldn't want to risk going inside regardless.

Vanna naturally expected it to get darker the farther she went in from the entrance, but to her pleasant surprise, it didn't. The pendant began to glow brighter in the darkness, illuminating the tunnel with its blue-green radiance. The tunnel kept on going down, and down, and down, and down, until coming to what seemed at first like an abrupt end. Knowing that had to be wrong, she looked around, and realized that the tunnel went on upward from there. Looking up, she saw what looked like the surface of the underwater tunnel—which was very confusing, because no part of the temple was above the water level of the lake—and two jellyfish that were probably as long as she was tall.

As she swam up toward the side of the tunnel opposite of the side where the first jellyfish was floating, it started to generate electricity. The only thing on Vanna's mind was that she needed to get away, so she started swimming up as fast as she could to get out of the bounds of its current. Because she was looking down to make sure its electricity didn't reach up to her, she didn't realize that she had already swum up to the second one until she felt herself get shocked. And as expected, given her awful luck over the past two weeks—first NEVA, now _this_ —it wasn't just like the small shock you sometimes get when touching something. It hurt worse than when NEVA had electrified her, and felt like it lasted an eternity longer.

When the jellyfish finally let up, Vanna hurried and swam the rest of the way up the tunnel. She emerged in a domed and notably not-underwater room. She climbed out of the water and sat down curled up on the floor, her body still shaking. The exposed parts of her arms and face were burning, while the rest of her was freezing from the water.

"Are you _crying?_ "

Vanna didn't bother looking up at Midna. " _Fuck off_." She tried her hardest to show that she wasn't going to take any of Midna's attitude, but it was a lot harder than normal to sound threatening when her voice was squeaky and wavering.

"Ooh, someone's moody today... Is that really the way you should be talking to the person who's helping you get back home?"

She clenched her fists, telling herself not to bite. Talking back to Midna was more trouble than it was worth. She just needed time to calm down, time to let it sink in that she was no longer underwater, no longer being shocked, and no longer in the tunnel. Thankfully, Midna didn't push it more, and she let Vanna sit there and cry it out.

Midna broke the silence after several minutes, when Vanna was starting to calm down some. "There's a monster coming for you."

At her words, Vanna finally looked up. Just a few feet ahead of her was a purple blob, that looked like grape jelly had come to life and was inching along the floor. It was far from what she was expecting to see when warned of a monster. Even the harmless Ooccoo looked infinitely more menacing. She knew that even if it wasn't dangerous, it at least wasn't friendly, or else Midna wouldn't have called it a monster, so she got her gun out and shot at it. Instead of turning black and blowing up, the jelly blob simply split apart into two smaller blobs, and continued inching along toward her. After she shot each of them, they were reduced to little purple puddles on the floor.

"You're welcome," Midna said.

Vanna rolled her eyes and pulled the face mask down under her chin. She looked away from Midna and rubbed the remaining tears out of her eyes. "Thanks. That grape jelly would've just _killed_ me if it weren't for you."

"They actually cling to your face and suffocate you, so yes, it would have. _You're welcome_."

She was embarrassed by being wrong, but it was easy enough to justify to herself why she had no reason to think the blobs would be able to hurt her. They really did look like moving grape jelly.

Despite how much time she spent both the night before and on the way to Lakebed that day obsessively worrying about how everything would go, Vanna had somehow managed to not think about something that seemed so very obvious at that moment. Her stomach growled, and she had no food.

Water, at least, she had plenty of. She had two filled canteens and a glass bottle of water in her pouch, and if she ran out of that, there was always the water in the temple, even if she wasn't too thrilled about drinking potentially contaminated water. Besides, she knew she could just get some antibiotics when she got home if the water really was contaminated. There was no solution to her lack of food other than to leave and find some. While she wasn't happy having to go back through the tunnel, she figured that she wouldn't have to go very far beyond it to get some food, considering that there was a floating house on the lake.

She wasn't sure how to broach the subject with Midna, so she started out just by saying, "I'm hungry."

"And?"

"And I want to eat."

"Then eat."

"I don't have any food."

"Not my problem. And you're not going to starve to death over the next few hours."

Of course Midna didn't seem to care. Vanna didn't think she ate or drank, unless her shadow was secretly hiding a shadow restaurant. "I know I won't starve to death. I'm worried about not being able to concentrate on what I'm doing because of being hungry."

"Then try harder to concentrate. You can't go back now. Hurry up and get through the temple, and then you can go home and eat." In a clear display of her desire to end the conversation there, she retreated into Vanna's shadow.

Groaning, Vanna pressed her palms into her eyes. She was _so close_ to going home. Just a few more hours. She could handle it.

She slowly got to her feet and took the time to look around the room she was in. Up a short set of staircases, two sconces were lit on either side of a gate, but the fires didn't light the room much. The pendant was providing most of what light there was, casting the room in cyan everywhere besides the small areas covered by the warm light of the fires. Before moving, Vanna put her flippers into her pouch and poured out the water that filled her boots. She walked up one of the staircases, eyeing a golden pulley hanging between them as she did. At the top, she reached over to grab it, and yanked it down.

The gate opened as a result, clearing the way to a door that she then walked up to. Vanna could tell it was like the modern doors from her world, going up into the wall, but it was different enough to leave her confused. There was no scanner to activate or button to press on the wall. She thought that maybe it had something to do with the flames on the wall, like how a bridge was raised in the Forest Temple because of four torches being lit. She turned around and walked back down the stairs, and searched for hidden torches or sconces behind the columns around the room, but she found nothing. She started to return to the door, her eyes scanning the floor for any switch to step on. By the time she made it back without a single clue how to open it, she was starting to get disgruntled. There were no switches, no buttons, no torches to light, and the pulley was down as far as it would go. Why couldn't they have just gone old-fashioned and put handles on the thing?

Midna popped up out of Vanna's shadow to her side. "Why are you procrastinating in here? Just push the door up and go in, already."

Vanna put both of her hands against the door, and with a shove upward, the door started to open from the bottom. Once again, she found herself embarrassed by Midna's words, but she was thankful that Midna seemed to think that she was just procrastinating and not actually stumped by a door that had to be opened manually instead of with the press of a button.

The door led to a long bridge high above flowing water, and there was another door—one with good old-fashioned handles—at the end of it. The light of the pendant didn't extend nearly far enough to cover all of the ring-shaped room, but Vanna could just barely make out more bridges to the left and right, all connected to the same place that she was headed into. There was just one challenge before she could get inside to what she assumed was the main room, in the form of a monster she hadn't yet seen.

The monster started racing toward her, dagger and shield at the ready, and Vanna rushed to retrieve her gun from her pouch. It raised its shield in the nick of time, the laser reflecting right off of it. Vanna didn't think it wise to try again what had already failed once, which narrowed her options down to the bow and arrows, and her sword and shield. She knew she would have been more comfortable with the former, but the monster had already proven it had no problem defending itself from projectiles, and the bow and quiver were still stashed away in her pouch while the monster was quickly approaching.

She dropped her gun, and pulled her sword out of its scabbard and held her shield in front of her. She tried to think back to everything the Hero's Shade had taught her, but in the heat of the moment, she more or less ended up slashing her sword around nonsensically while cowering behind her shield as much as she could. In her frenzy, she managed to slice the left arm of the monster, that she now noticed was essentially a bipedal, human-sized lizard. It threw its arm back with a screech, leaving an opening for Vanna to stab her sword right through its chest. It kept screeching in pain and it thrashed its body around her sword, more blood squirting out the more it did. Vanna thought it would have turned black and exploded into nothing at any moment, but it just wouldn't die. She attempted to pull her sword out to drive it back in again, only to find that it was stuck.

Holding her shield up above her to protect from the thoughtless onslaught of slashes from the monster's dagger, she crouched down to grab her gun off the floor. Without standing, she held it beside her shield and shot up at the monster underneath its shield. The laser was enough to finish it off. It fell on its back and puffed away, leaving Vanna's sword on the ground. She picked it up and looked over the completely blood-coated blade. She was slightly disgusted by it, but more than anything, she felt proud of herself. That monster was the first one she'd killed with her sword, and it didn't even get her once. All the blood on her sword, her body, and the ground was the monster's. Her life-long record of never having seen her own blood continued on.

After putting away her weapons, Vanna went on through the double doors at the end of the bridge. Though it was technically the third temple she'd been inside, Lakebed was the first that actually looked like a temple to her. A massive chandelier supplied ample light to the circular two-level room. The only way she could go to start was down the stairs, because of fences blocking her access to the rest of the upper room, but she didn't go down right away. She saw a wriggling pot on the other side of one of the fences. She walked over to it, having a solid clue in her mind as to what, or who, it was, even though it made no sense. Ooccoo poked her head out and looked at her, and like instinct Vanna drew back in revulsion, but she kept walking to the fence after the shock of how creepy Ooccoo continued to be wore off.

"Oh, my, you must help me get out!" Ooccoo pleaded.

Vanna looked up; the fence was tall, and while it had holes cut into it rather than bars, she knew she wouldn't be able to climb up over it because of the rocks at the top. "I'll have to find a way around so I can get you out, okay?"

"Oh, all right... I suppose I can't do anything but wait after all..."

She couldn't keep herself from asking the questions she desperately wanted to ask. "How did you even _get_ down here? And why do you keep on getting in pots when you know you get stuck every time?"

Ooccoo blinked, and disappeared into the pot.


	18. Secrets Inside

After going down the stairs, Vanna went to the only door that wasn't blocked off with fences. It opened up to another long bridge, perhaps one of the same bridges that she had seen when she first came in, with an unmoving waterwheel in the middle of it. A blue Tektite hopped toward her, and she managed to off it with four quick slices. Once the Tektite was dead, she walked up to the waterwheel to examine it and figure out what she had to do. She pushed and pulled it with all of her might, but it wouldn't budge. She wondered if she needed to get water to move it for her. There was another bridge overhead, so she knew that getting water to dump down from above onto the waterwheel wasn't an option.

The water would have to come along the bridge itself. The doors at both ends had holes at the bottom that would easily allow water to gush through them, and the sides of the bridge were raised enough that water wouldn't spill over. She wasn't sure how in the world she was supposed to channel a stream of water toward the wheel, but she hoped that the answer would make itself obvious when she got to it. With seemingly nothing more to do on the bridge, she went back the way she came.

She spent an embarrassingly long time walking around the central room, going back up and back down the stairs and examining everywhere she went diligently, looking for another door she could enter that she had managed to miss, or at least a way to make it past one of the fences. It was only as she was about to make her way back down the stairs for the umpteenth time that she stopped, and her eyes locked onto the golden pulley that hung above the staircase. She reached up and tried to yank it down. It didn't move, but she knew she found her answer. There were more golden pulleys hanging from both the top and bottom floors. One of them had to do _something_.

The one right at the bottom of the stairs didn't move either, so Vanna went to the next one over on the bottom floor. It was hanging a ways over the edge, meaning she'd have to jump over to it and risk falling far down into the fish-infested water. She was too high up to tell what exactly they looked like, but given that she was in a temple she worried that they were some type of monster fish. She took a running start and leaped over to the pulley. As her hands clasped onto it, her body weight tugged it down. The staircase started to spin around, and came to a stop with the bottom below her feet. She dropped down safely, still surprised at what she had just watched happen. She hadn't known what to expect from pulling it down, but never would have guessed that pulling it would make the stairs turn.

Unexpected as it was, Vanna was happy with her findings. She felt like she had just cracked the code that would help her solve the rest of the temple. Being able to move the stairs changed everything. She could get to places that the fences blocked off now, and she was that much closer to going home.

She walked up the newly-moved stairs, and at the top of the steps, she wondered which way she should go. She didn't think any fences were blocking her from getting to Ooccoo, but she already felt all turned around, and she wasn't sure which way she had to go to get to her. While she was searching before, she noticed that the baseboards along half of the room were red, and the other half were blue, which she thought could help her figure out which way to go, but now that she needed it, she started to doubt whether Ooccoo had really been on the red side like she thought she was. She decided to go right, down the red side, regardless, figuring it wouldn't be a big deal to turn back around and go the other way, and berating herself for not paying more attention.

Vanna was right the first time like she thought. She picked up the pot Ooccoo was in, and turned it upside down. With a shake, both she and her son came plopping out of the pot.

"Free at last!" Ooccoo proclaimed, shaking her feathers out. "Shall we stick together for a bit?"

Vanna agreed, and opened up her pouch. Ooccoo and her son both flew into it and Vanna watched, still as amazed by them shrinking down to fit inside it as she was the first time. She closed her pouch, feeling much safer having them in there to bail her out if she ever needed.

The only door on the top red side was locked, and she had no key. After looking it over for any information that could possibly help her later—all she found was a fish head carved out of rock above the door, and some hieroglyphic-looking designs right below the fish that looked like tornadoes and squiggles—she went over to the blue side. Before entering on that side, she looked around the door. It had the same hieroglyphic-looking designs but in blue, and a similar fish head above it, but the fish's mouth was open unlike on the other side. Keeping that in mind, she went in.

It was another bridge with an unmoving waterwheel blocking her from getting to the other side.

With an annoyed groan, she left the room again to look for another lead. In front of the door, hanging over the edge, was a golden pulley. She jumped over to grab it, and the staircase turned again so that the top was right under her. At the bottom of the stairs was an unlocked door.

She dropped down to go to it, hoping that it wouldn't lead to another bridge she couldn't get past. Right as she got to the door, something to her left caught her eye. She walked over to it and picked it up. It was a folded piece of yellowed, somewhat soggy paper. Vanna sat down and unfolded it, revealing a map of the temple that was slightly confusing. There were six different blurred drawings, each marked with two little symbols to the side. The last letter marking the top four was what she was fairly certain was a Hylian F, while the bottom two started with a Hylian B. She hadn't yet seen the other symbols that went with them, but she noticed that the one with the fourth F matched the one with the first B, and the one with the third F matched the second B.

"Midna?" she called.

She came out of her shadow. "Hm?"

"I still can't read Hylian text that much. What are these?" Vanna asked, tracing her finger over the unfamiliar symbols.

"They're numbers."

That was what she was guessing, but she wanted to make sure she was right. Looking at the map, the third F floor and fourth F floor looked like what she had thought was the top floor and bottom floor. "So, these two... They're actually the first and second floor, right?"

"Right. F1, and F2." Midna floated down closer to the map, and pointed to where she spoke of. "Then up there are F3 and F4, and down here are B1 and B2."

"B is for basement?" Vanna pondered aloud.

Midna shrugged. "I guess. But if you ask me, all of this seems like a basement..."

"All right," Vanna said, standing up with the map in hand. "Thanks for not being a bitch and actually helping me."

"Don't act like it's weird of me to help you! I want to get out of here quick, too! Of course I'm going to help."

"You didn't help me when I was wandering around for like half an hour looking for that pulley..."

"That wasn't my fault. I already told you, I can't see in your shadow. I can only hear. I'm never sure what exactly you're doing unless I come out of it. If you need help, just ask me, all right?"

"All right," Vanna mumbled. "You're probably just gonna make fun of me for asking for help, though, aren't you?"

"Yeah, I'll probably make fun of you, but I'll make fun of you while helping you. Even with a map, it'll be easy to lose your way in here. Just do me a favor and don't get _too_ lost."

Midna disappeared into her shadow, and Vanna looked down at the map again. She didn't think she would get lost. She knew she might wind up confused and not sure what to do, but she thought it was easy enough to look at the map and tell where she was, at least. She folded it back up and put it in her pouch, and then went through the door.

Once again, it was another bridge, but thankfully there was no waterwheel. Instead, there was a creature that looked something like a cross between an armadillo and little green rhino, with a spiked armor-like shell on its back and horn on its head. It started to charge at Vanna, and she quickly moved out of its way. It squealed like a pig as it rammed straight into the door. Its armor-shell didn't cover its rear, which she guessed was its weak spot that it could be killed through, but she decided to make a run for it instead. The door on the other side slammed shut behind her just in time to keep the creature out.

So soon after getting the map, Vanna was already confused. The room she was in didn't resemble its counterpart on the map very much at all. The map notably didn't do a good job of showing that up above the room was a giant gear on its side, that had three smaller circular platforms hanging from chains attached to it. It looked like she could just swim over to two doors on the map, but they were high on the walls in reality and impossible to reach from where she was. Her only option was to go down a curved tunnel, coming out closer to the bottom of the room. The path led her right down to a small silver key.

She got out the map again and looked it over. The door that was locked was the one that was by Ooccoo, on the second floor. She just had to go back past the bridge, up the stairs, and around, no need to move the stairs or anything.

Midna came out of her shadow again. "Lost already?"

"Not lost," Vanna said, folding the map and putting it away again. "Just making sure I know which way I have to go from here."

"Hmm. Well, if you ever need to, you can ask me to remember things for you. Unlike you, I've got a memory like a steel trap!" With a giggle, Midna went back down into her shadow.

Vanna rolled her eyes as she started leaving the room. "My memory is fine. It's just like you said; even with a map, it's easy to lose your way in here. It's not my fault the idiots who designed this place decided to make it so confusing."

The bridge behind the locked door ended up being just like the one on the floor below it. There was no waterwheel, and there was another one of those shelled creatures. Vanna settled on calling them Rhinadillos in her head; even if that wasn't their proper name, she liked having something to call them aside from _those spiky green assholes_. She ran right past that Rhinadillo too, and into the next room.

A Tektite saw her immediately and started hopping toward her, and she killed it quick enough. As she sheathed her sword, she couldn't help but think that the Zoras were being a bit dramatic about the temple being overrun by monsters. So far, outside of the water she had only come across the Tektites, the Rhinadillos, the Grape Jellies, and the lizard thing that she couldn't think up a catchy name for. They had all been easy to either kill or avoid, though she did admit to herself that it was probably just dumb luck that she killed the lizard thing as easily as she did. She also admitted to herself that her thinking about how easy the monsters were was nothing more than an attempt to calm her nerves and convince herself that being in the temple wasn't as bad as it really was.

Vanna got out the map once more as she walked farther into the room. It seemed that the room she was in was the outer ring of another circular room—the upper level of the room with the sideways gear, she thought—and her goal was to reach the doors on the opposite side of the ring. There were walls to either side of the room with gated archways, and she noticed the one to the right had a pulley up above where the wall abruptly ended. She put away the map, and went over to the gate. There were vines on the wall to its side, yet they were too high up for her to reach, so climbing up and over the wall wasn't an option. The gate was clearly made to go down into the ground, so she tried to push down on the bars, thinking it might have been like the doors, but it wasn't. It didn't move. It had to be the other gate, then.

Except it wasn't. That gate didn't move either, and upon closer inspection, she realized that couldn't have been the way to go at all; she could see another unmoving waterwheel through the bars, and there was no door to the inner room between it and the gate. It really was the left gate she had to pass through, but she didn't know how. She figured there was something to do with the pulley, and she had to get up to it using the vines, but she was too short to reach them.

She noticed a stash of five water bombs in the corner. Maybe she had to bomb the gates or something. Vanna called for Midna again. She had to know more of Hyrule's workings than Vanna did, so she hoped she knew what to do with the bombs. They were the only clue she had left.

After Midna came out of her shadow and Vanna explained to her the situation, Midna's answer was simple. "Why don't you use the bombs to knock down that stalactite over the vines, and climb up that to reach the vines?"

Vanna gave her an unamused look. "And just how do you expect the bomb to get up there? Do you want me to grow wings and fly it up?"

"...Huh. Well... What all do you have in your pouch?"

"Gun, bow and arrows, the boomerang, the iron—"

"Boomerang!" Midna interrupted. "That seems like a good idea, doesn't it? Just use the wind it creates to carry the bomb up to the stalactite!"

Her plan seemed like it could work at first thought. "...But Link used his magic to control where the boomerang flew. I don't have magic."

"Then you'll just have to figure out a way to aim it really well without magic."

After a few minutes of thinking of different ways to go about it, Vanna settled on one that somehow seemed both the most ridiculous and the most likely to work. She threw the bomb up in the air with her left hand, threw the boomerang with her right, and the bomb got sucked up into the tornado the boomerang created. Unfortunately for her, the bomb missed the stalactite by a few feet. It was on her fourth try, with only one more bomb left to spare, that she finally got it. The bomb exploded as it hit its mark, and the stalactite fell down to the ground.

"Ridiculous," she muttered. That had to be the most convoluted way of solving anything ever. She didn't quite believe that there wasn't a much easier way that they just weren't aware of.

"Hey, at least it worked," Midna offered before shrugging and disappearing.

Vanna stuffed the spare bomb into her pouch just in case, and then finally made her way up the vines and over to the pulley. The pulley made the gate go down into the ground when she jumped and grabbed onto it. It was only after she was hanging that she realized the only way for her to get back down was to drop twenty or so feet to the ground. Closing her eyes, she let herself slip. It wasn't as bad as she thought it would be, but it still wasn't pleasant.

She had two options from there. She could go to the inner room from a door, or blow up the giant rock that was preventing her from going farther along the ring.

She decided to peek into the room first, and make her final decision after that. When she saw one of the lizard things guarding a door on the opposite side of the room, she let the door slam back down and retrieved the spare bomb she had.

The bomb blew the giant rock to pieces, opening the way to another door. She ran past two more Rhinadillos and into the room. The newest room had a new type of monster in it. It looked almost like an oversized insect, and it walked around from inside a protective bubble of water. Vanna slashed her sword at the bubble thinking that would pop it, but the little creature just giggled. It bounced toward her, and she backed away from it as far as the room allowed her. She got out her bow and arrow and shot at it. The arrow became embedded in the bubble without reaching the creature, and it giggled again.

Vanna quickly attempted to reuse the same key from earlier on the locked door leading into the room she was headed for, but when it didn't work, she turned around and left through the door to the side of the one she had come in from, back into the ringed room. Down a ledge, several Grape Jellies were inching along the ground, along with a single red one—a Strawberry Jelly, perhaps—and she could see bats hanging on the walls near the waterwheel. Most importantly, a silver key was shining on the ground next to the wheel.

She used her gun to kill all the monsters in the room before hopping on down and grabbing the key. She turned around and walked back to the ledge, but when she got up to it, she realized it was higher than she had noticed while she was on it. Even standing on her tiptoes with her arms stretched above her, her fingers couldn't reach the top. She groaned. If Link was with her, he could have lifted her and helped her get up there, but as it were, it looked like she was going to have to go through the door and into the room with the lizard thing, and then back around. She just had to hope that her dumb luck would pull through again.

It had been standing in front of the door she was about to open earlier, but when she opened it up, it had moved away from it. Instead, it was standing on the gear, looking over the edge at the room down below. Vanna closed the door behind her as quietly as possible, and stepped over onto the gear on her tiptoes, hoping that she could sneak by and leave without it noticing her.

It started to turn its head in her direction, and she hurried to hide behind the thick pole that held the gear in place. As she heard its footsteps get closer to the pole, she got the feeling that a fight would be unavoidable. She reached up and grabbed the hilt of her sword. While the monster had been holding both a dagger and shield when she walked in, it wasn't holding them like it was ready to fight and defend with them. Attacking it while it wasn't ready seemed like a good idea to her.

When its footsteps were close enough that Vanna could tell it was just around the pole, she hopped out to the side with her sword and shield ready, and slashed her sword forward. When she was already halfway through her slash, she noticed that the lizard thing already had its shield up. A fraction of a second later, metal hit metal. Her surprise attack had failed. She decided that she may as well fight this one as she had the last one: like a total and utter wimp, hiding behind her shield as much as she could, and hoping like hell that one of her erratic slashes would eventually get the monster.

It seemed that she had already used up all of her dumb luck that day, as the monster was nowhere near as dumb as the last one that she had fought. It didn't repeatedly wack at her shield to no avail. From her hiding spot behind her shield, she could just barely see the monster jump up and spin around, and Vanna felt rather than saw the blades on its tail slashing through her left thigh. At first, it felt like nothing more than a scratch, but as what happened dawned on her, searing pain started to set in. It was like being shocked again, with the sizzling feeling of electricity zapping along the laceration, getting stronger and stronger until it felt like it was on fire, and she couldn't help but scream.

She nearly threw her shield to the side as her swings became more erratic and more rushed. Her will to defend herself had been completely overpowered by the intense urge to kill the monster already. She mimicked its own strategy, aiming for its lower body left uncovered by its shield. Vanna got it repeatedly in just seconds, but the numerous cuts on its legs did nothing to stop it. She raised her shield just in time to deflect one of its attacks, and right afterward, she managed to cut right across its stomach. It screeched loudly as it doubled over, its face lined up perfectly with her sword. Vanna took the opportunity to stab it right through its mouth.

With her sword still inside it, the lizard thing exploded away into nothing.

Vanna dropped both her sword and her shield and fell down to her knees. Her eyes squeezed shut, and her hands balled up into fists. The pain started getting worse without something to distract her. She was scared to look at her cut, even though she knew she had to. She was terrified of seeing blood pouring out of her leg. She had never even noticed a _bruise_ on her skin, much less an open wound. She had always been careful to not do anything that would hurt her. What might have been a routine injury for others was an unheard of injury for her.

All things considered, she knew she'd been extremely lucky up until then, and a cut was really overdue. She had fallen off the bridge in the Forest Temple, she fell off Epona, she got whipped and thrown against the wall in the mines, and she got shocked by a giant jellyfish. She should have seen something else coming. Vanna pressed her hands against her eyes, trying to get rid of the tears without letting them out.

When she finally gained up the courage to look down at her cut, she saw no blood. She saw right inside of the gash, where there were wires and metal encased in translucent material instead of bone covered by muscles and tissues.

She heard Midna say something, but she couldn't decipher it. She felt like her brain stopped working. No thoughts crossed her mind. She couldn't take her eyes off her leg.

An ear-splitting yell jolted Vanna out of her stupor, but she still didn't feel like she was back to normal. " _Vanna!_ " Midna said. "What's going on with you? What is _up_ with your _leg?_ "

Vanna gulped, finding herself unable to look at Midna, or anything other than her leg. "I-I don't know... Maybe... Maybe something happened to it when I was a baby? And I got a prosthetic leg that blended in and grew along with me, and my mom never told me it was fake...? Prosthetics have come a long way..."

"Is that possible?" Midna slowly asked.

"I'm sure Mr. Rider could pull something like that off..." she said. "But no one ever _told_ me."

"Well... You can communicate with people from your world still, right? Why don't you ask your mom about it?" Midna suggested.

She nodded and pulled out her phone. Her fingers shook as she typed in the question and sent it. A long minute passed before her phone vibrated in response. It was an incoming call from her mother. She gave Midna a look, and she hid in her shadow again. Even though Vanna knew Midna could still hear her from in there, it made her more comfortable to at least not have Midna staring at her.

"Explain," Vanna said as she answered the call. "Now."

" _Please, Vanna, stay calm._ "

"What happened and why did you never tell me?"

Her mother sighed. " _I... I don't want to beat around the bush. You deserve to know, but just, stay calm."_

"Just _tell_ me already."

" _You know that I've been helping Mr. Rider beta test for a long time, and you know how passionate he is about his inventions. He needed someone he could really trust to help him out with one, and..._ "

Vanna was certain she saw where it was going. Her face contorted in anger. "So you let him chop off your baby's leg just so he could test out a growing prosthetic?!"

" _That's not what happened._ "

"Then what happened?" she demanded. Her mother was silent for a few seconds. "Tell me!"

" _He needed a human family to take in his newest Synthuman prototype._ "

Vanna froze up again.

 _No_. She was lying. She was definitely lying. There was no way.

"I feel _pain_ ," Vanna blurted out. "I feel pain and I eat and drink and my heart beats in my chest and I grew up like everybody else. And I'm _deaf_. Why would I—why would a Synthuman be _defective?_ A-and Mr. Rider said himself that we didn't have sentient robots yet! I'm _sentient!_ "

" _I'm here with Mr. Rider, and I'm passing the phone to him right now, okay? He can explain everything to you better than I can..._ "

She heard shuffling before Mr. Rider's voice came through. " _Vanna, I... I'm not sure where to start,_ " he said. " _Before you, there was ... well,_ you. _Not long after I created you, Lee and Daina left you home alone one day, and you accidentally cut yourself. You saw what was inside of you, and you just ... lost it. When your mother came home, you were a metal skeleton standing in a pile of synthetic flesh and organs. You were driven to insanity by the knowledge of what you were. I had to power you down._ "

She felt something in her stomach that she had never felt before. Nausea.

Why would he lie to her about something like that?

" _After wiping your memories again and messing with you a bit, I powered you back up, and you had a brand new start,_ " he went on. " _I knew from the beginning that you couldn't feel human without a beating heart, or if you didn't feel pain, or if you couldn't perform normal human bodily functions, even though those things aren't necessary for your survival, so I had to make you capable of them. You aren't really deaf, either. It was just another white lie to make you feel more human. And no, Vanna, you didn't grow up like everyone else. You've only been powered on for three years._ "

"Three ... years?" Vanna said, her voice a higher pitch than normal. Why was she even playing along? He was still lying. "I—!"

" _You never grew up. Think back. You don't actually have any memories before your fourteenth birthday._ "

More lies. She was about to shout ' _I do_.'

But she stopped herself.

She could have sworn that she remembered growing up, but when she actually searched for a single memory of her childhood, she could think of nothing before the day of her fourteenth birthday. It was like...

" _That was when you were powered on_ ," Mr. Rider finished her thought.

Her brain—or some technological imitation of a brain, according to him—started going frantic, trying to find memories that weren't there, trying to find a way to explain away everything he said. "But—but I've seen pictures and videos of myself when I was little! I have them saved on my phone, in my hand! Mom even showed me pictures of the sonos she got when she was pregnant with me!"

" _That wasn't really you_ ," he said. " _That was who you were modeled after. Your parents' daughter. She died as a little girl, and your mother couldn't have any more children, so I offered to model my new Synthuman after her so that your parents could at least see what their daughter could have been like if she got the chance to grow up. The human Vanna is the one in the pictures and videos you've seen, not you._ "

The words ' _I am the human Vanna, I_ am _the human Vanna_ ,' repeated in her head, as if just thinking it enough times would make it true. She knew that it was nothing more than a desperate attempt to delude herself, but she couldn't stop it. Tears had started flowing down her cheeks rapidly, and her breaths were heavy.

"... _Why?_ " was the only thing she could get out.

" _Why_ what?" Mr. Rider sounded bored, like her feelings were of no concern to him.

"Why would you even _make_ me?! So you could brag that you tricked me into thinking I was a person when I'm not?!" Vanna said, her voice trembling through her cries. She started to cry harder, reality truly hitting her as she spoke it. "You already knew how it destroyed me once, so why would you even power me on again?! _Why?!_ Imagine finding out that your whole life has been a _fucking lie_! How—how could you _do_ this to me?!"

" _I didn't create you to brag. For years, people have been dreaming of sentient robots, and I decided to try my hardest to finally give them what they wanted. I just didn't think my little_ 'sentient' _prototype would prove as much of a problem as it has. After I found out the first time that the thought of not being human was enough to make it go insane_ —"

"' _It_ '?" Vanna repeated. ' _It'_ ' was _her_.

"— _I thought that, as long as it believed itself to be no different from anyone else for years, then it would be able to handle the truth when it found out, and what happened then wouldn't happen again. That's part of why your mother was always so overprotective of you, you know. You weren't supposed to find out yet, and you especially weren't supposed to find out like this. I'm sorry for not being able to tell you earlier, but I truly believed that your ignorance of your status as a Synthuman was essential_ ," he said without a single shred of remorse in his voice. " _I suppose I was wrong, for once._ "

There were a million things Vanna wanted to say, but she couldn't make herself say any of them. Her world was crashing down around her, and all she could do was sit there and cry.

" _There's no point in crying. Just get over it._ "

Her grip on her phone became so tight that she heard it crack. She started to yell into her phone, but she was barely aware of the words leaving her mouth. The only thing she was sure of was that she screamed out countless insults and questions that she wouldn't accept any answer to. Her throat was burning by the time her livid tirade was over, and she fell back into crying.

A voice that didn't belong to Mr. Rider sounded quietly through her phone. " _Did she lose it again?_ " Vanna recognized the voice as Zi afterward.

Zi knew all along. _Zi_. It was one thing for her ' _family_ ' to hide such a secret from her, but her _best friend?_

" _Dad, let me talk to her..._ "

A shuffling noise told her Mr. Rider's phone was no longer held up to his face, but it wasn't for the reason she thought. She could barely hear Mr. Rider say, " _No, Zi. You need to move on. She shouldn't be acting like this after I reprogrammed her. As soon as I finish making these NEVAs and you bring her back here, that's it._ "

Vanna hung up immediately, holding her phone tightly in her quivering hand.

Her Synthuman hand, with metal bones and artificial flesh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To copy the explanation of my questionable choices from FFN: I tried to put in hints to hopefully make Vanna seem a bit off (like never dreaming, not sweating or having a stroke in immense heat, sticking to magnets without iron boots, etc.) but that could generally be explained away by something else. If it was too obvious from the start that Vanna's a Synthuman, then it would really call into question how she never figured it out herself, and I didn't want it to be like those infuriating murder mystery novels where you figure out who the murderer is 200 pages before the main character does. I erred on the side of caution because of that, but I've been worried I might have ended up going too far in the opposite direction, making the reveal seem too out of nowhere to everyone but me because I knew from the start that Vanna was a Synthuman. I hope that if you feel that it was too out of nowhere, you can at least see where I was coming from with attempting to find the right balance.


	19. Reflection

Vanna spent minutes frozen in place, blurry eyes boring into the gash in her leg.

She still didn't quite believe it. She couldn't.

Her hands reached up and she dug her fingers deep into her ears, ripping out her hearing aids. Even once they were out, she continued to hear her ragged breathing, and the quiet electrical hum she had always attributed to them. It came from _her_. That constant buzz was from her body.

She whispered to herself, " _No_ ," and she heard it. She heard it just the same the next ten times she repeated it.

Vanna opened up the photo app on her phone, and found her collection of old pictures she had saved. She clicked on the very first picture, with _Vanna Lee Meadows – July 8th, 2102_ written at the bottom. Her mom was in a hospital bed, dark hair disheveled and an exhausted smile on her face, and her dad was sitting next to her, grinning so wide that his blue eyes looked like two little black lines. Vanna was bundled up in his arms. Her skin was tinted a purplish-red, and her pink hat left some of the little red hairs that clung to her head visible.

The next picture was taken in the same room, but over on a bench. This time, it was a young, happy Jaylene holding her, while Kalina sat next to her looking discontent. She continued to scroll through the pictures she had, watching as she grew from a newborn to a toddler to a child.

The collection ended similar to how it started, and not long after it. The last picture, labeled as being taken in 2106, had Vanna laying back on a hospital bed—she remembered being told it was taken after she had her appendix taken out—smiling weakly with her parents and sisters at her sides.

Except they weren't her parents or her sisters. She was never born, never held as a baby, never grew, never had her appendix taken out, never had anything that the pictures showed at all, because that little girl wasn't her. That little girl was dead and her life was never Vanna's.

Vanna's phone slammed against the wall before falling into the room below, and her hearing aids followed.

Midna came out of her shadow, slower than she usually did, and she spoke softer than she ever had to her. "Vanna, I... I heard all of that..."

She turned her body away from Midna, slouching over and covering her eyes with her hands. "Leave me alone."

Mr. Rider's words wouldn't stop repeating in her head. ' _As soon as I finish making these NEVAs and you bring her back here, that's it._ ' She knew very well what ' _that's it_ ' meant.

Vanna reached around to the nape of her neck. She ran her fingers over the layer of synthetic skin just below her hairline, feeling for an imprinted product code. When she didn't find that, she pushed down into her skin until she felt what she feared the most was there, something right between two of her vertebrae, hard and as small as a grain of rice. Her own tracking chip, like all the other Synthumans had. No matter where she was on their planet, he could, and would, use it to find her. If she couldn't stop him from powering her off before, there was no way she could keep him from powering her off again. He stopped at nothing to do whatever he set his mind to do, and he had already set his mind to end her for not acting how he programmed her to.

She couldn't go home, not as long as he was there. She felt safer in a world with pterodactyls and fire-breathing alligators and lizard swordsmen than in a world with him.

He wasn't going to win this time. He couldn't power her down if he could never find her.

But she had no idea where to go. She had no home in Hyrule. She thought about going back to Link's house, but Ordon seemed far too obvious. As close as Zi had always been to her, his loyalty to his father was unfaltering, and just like how Mr. Rider would stop at nothing to end her for not acting how he wanted, Zi would stop at nothing to find her for his father. He knew that she had been in Ordon before, and there was a high chance that would be where he'd start his search.

The only other place Vanna knew of and had been so far was Kakariko. It seemed like an obvious place for Zi to search as well, especially considering that was the last place she'd told him she had been in, but at least he had no idea that she had claimed her own little shack there. It wasn't luxurious—not that she'd ever lived in a place she considered to be, though the dinky modern apartment she lived in in America certainly looked to be by Hyrule's standards—but it would have to do.

Vanna pulled her pouch off of her belt, and reached in and plucked out Ooccoo and her son.

"What do you think you're doing?" Midna asked.

She didn't bother responding to her. She was done with her. "Ooccoo, can you please get me out of here?"

"Yes, I can! Ooccoo Jr. can warp you right out, and you can return right here whenever you please!"

"He can come back to you by himself. I'm not coming back."

"What do you think you're _doing?_ " Midna asked with more force. "If you leave, you're not getting your bracelet back!"

"I don't _want it!_ " Vanna yelled back. "There's no point anymore! I can't go home when Mr. Rider will kill me if I do!"

"But we need to get that last Fused Shadow!"

"Fuck your Fused Shadows! I don't owe you anything for you _ruining my life!_ " As Vanna yelled at her, her fist went flying toward her, only for her punch to pass right through Midna's shadowy body.

Midna stared at her blankly for a few seconds, before silently slipping back into her shadow. Still breathing heavily, Vanna looked at Ooccoo. She had her son held in her wings, and it took Vanna a moment to realize that she was trying to cover his ears.

"I'm sorry," Vanna said quietly. "Can I go, now?"

* * *

Once Ooccoo Jr. had warped her out and went back to his mother, Vanna went up the incline out of the lake and found Epona grazing not far from the bridge where she left her. She brought Epona back over to the bridge, intending to use the safety wall to climb up onto her. As Vanna settled on her saddle, she looked out past the deep basin that housed Lake Hylia, where the green grass of the field faded into dirt, which faded into sand that stretched as far as the eye could see. There were structures out in the desert, and Vanna saw what looked to be a village. She thought briefly that it would have to be a better hiding place than Kakariko because of how far away it was. Her mind wandered to Castle Town, then. She hadn't been there either, but Link had claimed it was filled to the brim with people, so even that seemed like a better potential hiding place. It'd be easier to blend in if it was densely populated, and on top of it, much easier to get to; she imagined it was near the castle, which was partially visible from the field now that the wall of twilight was gone.

Epona nickered, and Vanna was reminded that she couldn't get to the desert village or Castle Town without her. She couldn't just steal Link's horse. He needed her, and even if he didn't, Vanna didn't know how to care for her. Vanna made a noise and tapped Epona's sides with her feet, and the horse took off.

It was dark by the time they got back to Kakariko Village, and aside from Vanna's cut not hurting any longer, she felt just the same as when she left the temple. Telma's horse and wagon were right outside of the Elde Inn. Link was back already, and Vanna knew he had to have realized that she and Epona were gone. She left Epona near Telma's horse, and when she went to walk back to her shack, she noticed light through the windows. She had never bothered to light the sconces inside; someone else had done it, and she had a clue who it was. Her fists clenched as she walked up to the house and opened the door.

Link was sitting on her bed, arms crossed and scowling. As soon as he looked her over, his expression softened.

"...What happened?" he asked gently.

"Just get out," Vanna answered, her voice breaking.

She saw Midna appear out of the corner of her eye, and she made a motion with her arm. Link looked back and forth between them before getting up and silently walking out, Midna leaving with him. Vanna locked the door behind them.

Vanna started to walk toward her bed, but she stopped and turned as she saw something else moving in the corner of her eye. It was her reflection in the mirror.

She knew they were, but she double-checked that the windows were up high enough that nobody could see in before she stripped out of the Zora suit and stood in front of the mirror. Her hands roamed her body as her eyes roamed her reflection. She felt human. She looked human.

But she looked exactly the same as she always had. Sure, she had only been powered on for three years, and most girls didn't have a drastic change in appearance between fourteen and seventeen, but they did have changes, however minute they were. She didn't. She couldn't even blame Link for thinking she was fourteen when they first met. There wasn't a single part of her that had ever changed since she was ' _fourteen_.'

Her youthful face and short body were easily explained away by the idea that she was just a late bloomer. The fact that hair can only grow so much explained why her hair had always ended just a few inches above her hips without ever needing to be cut, and the fact that she never bothered to cut it regardless meant she never learned that it probably wasn't even possible for it to grow. Her mother's explanation for why her nails didn't grow—' _nails stop growing at a certain point, just like hair, and that point is different for everyone_ '—had been satisfactory enough for Vanna to never question it again. She felt incredibly stupid for falling for the lies she had been fed.

Yet, as she soaked in every detail of her body, it was easy to see how she fell for the lies. She had no reason to assume that she _wasn't_ human when what she saw in the mirror looked no different from anyone else. She looked overwhelmingly realistic. She even saw light veins on her wrists and hands and the inside of her elbows, even a few just barely noticeable ones on the front of her hips and her chest. She held her fingers against the pale blue lines on her wrist for the first time. No blood coursed through them. They were just surface details painted on where there should have been veins.

Vanna raised a hand to her chest and pressed down. It was far from the first time she had done that, but it was different this time. She had always found comfort in the steady beat of her heart, and now it just made her uneasy, because now she knew it wasn't a real heart. It didn't pump blood throughout the rest of her body. It was just a thing thumping in the middle of her chest in the way a real heart would to delude her into thinking she was a real person. Even something as small as her navel was for nothing more than deception, never having been attached to an umbilical cord. That was all everything was for.

She stood closer to the mirror, her nose almost touching her reflection. Her hazel eyes were glossy, and her orange lashes were clumped together from being coated with a thin layer of tears. The whites of her eyes had turned red around the edges. Everything about them looked unquestionably real. The eyes were one thing Mr. Rider always got right on his robots that his competitors in the market just couldn't seem to, but just like Vanna's heart, it didn't matter how real her eyes seemed. Nothing, not even the way little red lines showed up to mimic the appearance of blood vessels the longer she cried, could make her forget that they weren't actually real.

The only giveaway was the cut on her leg. Her skin wasn't stretched out like it was when her legs were bent, making it impossible to see inside the cut while standing. Still, even unable to see inside it, it was clearly not what a cut looked like on a normal human. No blood seeped out of it, and it didn't look at all red or irritated around the edges. It was a clean, sharp line, that looked more like flattened dough that someone had dragged a knife through than any sort of human injury. Looking at it, Vanna understood completely why she had ripped herself to pieces the last time she found out she was a Synthuman. She wanted nothing more than to peel off the fake flesh that covered her to find out what else was hiding inside.

Vanna couldn't stand looking at herself for much longer. She redressed herself in the blue dress Luda had given her, and curled up under her blanket, thinking that it would have been better if NEVA had just killed her in the first place.

* * *

After hours laying there grieving the loss of her old life and hoping to fall asleep, Vanna heard a knock on her door. She poked her head out from under the blanket, and upon looking out the windows and finding that the sun wasn't even out yet, she went right back under. Whoever it was could wait until daytime. Or another day entirely. Or they could wait forever.

The person knocked again, and was ignored again, until she heard a voice through the door calling out her name. It was Link.

She had been telling herself that she wanted to be alone, but hearing his voice made a part of her start fighting back. She didn't want to be alone at all. She never did when she was sad. She would always run to her ' _mom_ ' or Zi when something was upsetting her, and if they weren't available for some reason, she made do with one of her other friends that she wasn't as close to, but none of those people were options anymore. Link was the closest thing Vanna had to a friend left, and she had never needed a friend more in her life.

Brushing off her fear that he was still mad at her for stealing Epona and he only came to berate her, she got up and opened the door. Link was standing there, wearing only his hat, untucked undershirt, pants, and boots, holding one of his brown pouches in his hand. He didn't look mad. He just looked tired, with that little touch of sadness that he hadn't been able to hide since Colin died.

"I can't sleep," he confessed.

"Me either," she mumbled.

He nodded toward the room, silently asking to come in. Sighing, she stepped to the side and let him enter. She closed the door as he went to go sit down on the edge of her bed, and then she joined him. Neither of them looked at each other or said anything for a minute.

"...So, Midna told me everything," he said.

Vanna looked the opposite direction of him, toward the door. She didn't know how to feel. She was angry at Midna for telling him when it was none of her business to do so, yet relieved that she didn't have to be the one to tell him, and at the same time, she was horrified that he knew the truth. She didn't want anyone to know what she was.

"...I'm not mad at you for stealin' Epona and the things in my pouch," Link went on. "Well. I am, a li'l, but not as much as I was. It was stupid and dangerous for you to take Epona out there without me. You both could'a got killed."

"I _know_ ," Vanna groaned out. She squeezed her eyes shut and curled her fists. "If you just came here to scold me, then you can leave. I know what I did was stupid and I wish I never would have listened to _Midna_ ," Vanna couldn't stop herself from saying her name with all the disdain she felt for her. " _She_ was the one that convinced me to do it, so you can tell _her_ off, not me."

"I'm not here to scold you. I wanted to get that out the way so you'd know that I'm here because you're upset, and... I thought maybe you'd wanna talk about it some by now, since neither of us is asleep anyway."

Vanna wasn't sure that she was, or that she ever would be ready to talk about it. "...How much do you know?"

"Midna said she could hear everythin' that man said to you, and she told me all of it. I know you're a robot."

Hearing that word come out of his mouth felt so wrong. "Do you know what that word _means?_ Do you even have them here?"

"What, robots? I know about them. I don't know if we have them anymore, or if we ever truly did, but I've read books that mentioned us having robots in ancient times. My pops even used to read me a story about them when I was a kid. It was one of my favorites," he said. "...You're ... different, though. You're so _human_."

"But I'm not," Vanna said under her breath. The admission made tears start to prick at her eyes again. "I'm not a _person_."

"What're you talkin' about? Of course you're—oh."

She wondered how it took her saying it aloud for it to hit him that she wasn't a person like he had assumed she was.

"Do you remember what I told you in the mines when you said that only humans were considered people in your world?" he asked.

She thought back to their conversation. He had told her to be careful around anything that wasn't a person, and that humans, Hylians, Gorons, Zoras, and Fairies were all people in Hyrule. "...You told me about the different kinds of people in Hyrule." When he didn't respond, she asked, "Why?"

"Don't you realize what I'm saying? You don't have to be a human to be a person."

Vanna rolled her eyes, and she felt a tear start to fall. "Just because there are other people here that aren't humans doesn't mean that I'm a person, too. People are _born_ , not created. Pretending that robots are people is crazy. You don't have to lie and pretend you don't care to try to make me feel better. It's not gonna work."

"I'm not lying. I don't care if you're a robot, and I bet our robots counted as people to everyone else who lived back then. Y'know, the last few weeks I've realized there are more people than I ever thought. There are shadow people, and Ooccoo's people, and honestly, I've been thinkin' that _animals_ are people, too. A robot being a person ain't that crazy at all."

After wiping her eyes, Vanna finally got the courage to look at him for the first time since he came in. She supposed he did always strike her as the kind of person who would genuinely think that animals and things that were definitely not people counted as people. There wasn't a shred of insincerity to be found in his face. He really didn't care.

She hoped that he wouldn't care about her nearly throwing herself at him for a hug, either. He felt rigid for a second before the tension started to wash away, and he wrapped his arms around her back in return.

"Do you feel better now?" he asked.

"A little," she answered, her voice slightly muffled. She sniffled. "I'm happy that you don't care, but I... I think you're out of your mind, and I still don't think I'm a person, but I was never upset just because of that. My life is _ruined_. I can't go back home, Link. If I do, Mr. Rider will find me no matter where I go, and even if I don't Zi is going to try to chase me down here so he can bring me back, and if he does Mr. Rider will kill me, so now I'm stuck here and I'm going to constantly have to be worried about him finding me, and I..." She gulped, before adding in a tiny voice, "I'm scared."

Link seemed to ponder what she said. "...You can stay with me, if you want to."

Vanna pulled away from him, and looked at him confusedly. "What, and keep on going with you wherever you go?"

He shrugged. "If you stay in one place, he's gonna find you a whole lot easier."

"I don't understand. You're the one that didn't want me to come along with you in the first place because you were worried about my safety, and just hours ago you were mad at me for leaving with Epona for the same reason, but now you want me to go along with you into more dangerous situations?"

"It's different, now. If you're gonna be in danger no matter where you go, I'd rather you be in danger with me than by yourself."

Again, Vanna found herself having conflicting feelings. Even if it would be harder for Zi to find her while traveling with Link, that advantage itself would open up more room for trouble. The temples and monsters inside them could be just as dangerous. Ultimately, she ran the risk of dying either way. She wanted neither, but like with everything else anymore, there could never be a happy medium. It was risking death at the hands of a monster, or risking death at the hands of the man who created her. She just had to decide which one scared her the most so she could go the other way.

It was no wonder Link could see the Light Spirits and she couldn't.

"It was just an offer," Link said after moments of her contemplating it. "You've got some time to think about it. I'm gonna stay in Ordon for a few days, and maybe spend some time here once I'm done there. I wanna make sure Ilia's all right."

She pursed her lips as she realized how much she didn't like the idea of being stuck in the village with just Renado, Luda, Telma, and Barnes at such a time. The thought of Link's presence alone made her feel more at ease. "Can I go with you? Just—just down to Ordon, and back here, at least. I'm not sure yet if I want to keep traveling with you after that..."

"I was 'bout to ask if you wanted to." Link put a hand on her back, and smiled just a little bit. "You won't have to worry about Zi if you're with me. I can keep you safe."

Even feeling as awful as she still did, Vanna couldn't help but return his small smile. His offer was touching, and it was what she needed to hear when she was terrified about someone wanting to kill her or hand her off to someone else to kill her. Just two weeks ago, she would have been offended at his implication that he could protect her better than she could protect herself, even knowing full well that it was probably true, but reality had kicked her pride in the face and she was now beyond the point of turning down help she knew she needed. Zi was 6'6", a whole seventeen inches taller than her, and his legs were practically as long as her body. She wouldn't stand a chance running away from him, and though he had almost no muscle to speak of, she knew without a doubt that she was even weaker, so there was no physical fighting either. Link, despite barely being taller than her, had strength on his side at least, which could give him a leg up on Zi. If he could wrangle 500-pound goats, he could wrangle someone lucky to be pushing 170.

"So when are we leaving?" Vanna asked.

"I think we should try to get some sleep first, but there's still something I wanted to talk to you about. Well, there's a lot I want you to tell me, but for now..." Link grabbed his pouch that he had sat next to him on the bed. "...Midna told me your cut is still open. I got a needle and thread and scissors from Renado. I thought maybe you'd want me to close it up for you...?"

Vanna looked down at her lap, where her wound was hidden under her dress. She wasn't sure if stitching it shut would be a good idea. She remembered Mr. Rider's personal secretary, a Synthuman he named Synthia, had once accidentally cut her finger and calmly came into his office—not seeming to mind seeing the inside of her robotic finger whatsoever—while Vanna was in there with him. Mr. Rider had put a special type of glue on her, and after he pressed the skin back together, it was almost impossible to tell that she had ever been cut at all.

But there was no running off to Mr. Rider's office to get him to glue a wound shut for her, and she couldn't go on for too long with an open cut on her leg. Sooner or later she would want to take a bath, and she heavily doubted that Mr. Rider would have made her waterproof on the inside with the expectation of water flooding in under her skin.

"It'd be nice if you would," she said. She started to pull her dress up her leg, only to pause an inch before the cut could be seen. Suddenly, she felt hesitant to show it to him, and she hurried to come up with a way to stall the situation while she tried to calm herself. "...Um, actually... D-do you know how to stitch?"

"Yeah. Uli taught me how to, and I got to practice on Talo a few times."

She gave a short hum. It was nice that he was qualified, or as qualified as a person from a tiny village with no school could be—not that that had really factored into her hesitance. Her hesitance was so irrational that she couldn't begin to justify it even to herself. He already knew what she was, so there was no reason to be scared of showing him, yet she still had trouble bringing herself to move her hand.

"Will you promise me something first?" she asked. He nodded. "Please don't tell anyone about any of this."

"Promise."


	20. Guidance

After Link left, Vanna attempted to go to sleep. She tossed and turned throughout the night, only to give up when light started to pour in through the windows.

She intended to go outside and pace the village to hopefully calm her frazzled nerves, yet she stopped in her tracks as she grasped the door handle. A sense of dread washed over her, and she couldn't pinpoint why at first. She thought that maybe it was solely out of the irrational fear that Zi would be standing on the porch when she opened the door. He told her the new NEVAs were halfway done when she had asked on the 12th, and it was the 15th, so if Mr. Rider's work on them continued to progress at the same rate, that meant Vanna still had about nine days left before having to worry, and technological difficulties could give her even more time. Whatever the case, she knew from working with Mr. Rider that things were rarely finished ahead of time, so the chances of him having finished already and her opening the door to Zi were practically nonexistent. She had no reason to be scared yet.

Vanna realized with a jolt that it wasn't who was potentially outside that was setting off alarms in her head at all. It felt like there was somebody behind her.

Midna's shadowy form was hovering a few feet above the ground when she looked back.

"What do you _want?_ " Vanna nearly growled as she turned to her.

"Link got to talk to you earlier, and now I want to," Midna said.

Vanna crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. "Unless it's an apology, I don't want to hear it."

"I'm fresh out of apologies to give, but I have—wait!"

She ignored Midna's plea for her to wait, and finished walking out. Midna followed her outside, and Vanna came to a stop as she floated right in front of her. Vanna looked down the length of the village, where numerous Gorons were loitering around the buildings.

"The Gorons are going to look this way and see you," she said.

"Whatever! You can just tell them their eyes were playing tricks on them if they say anything. I have an idea that I need to tell you!" Midna said.

Vanna knew Midna wasn't going to stop bugging her until she finally got to tell her whatever her idea was. "What is it?" she asked so indifferently that it didn't sound like a question.

"I've been thinking. You said your bracelet is a ' _time traveling device_ ,' and you wanted it to take you to the future in your world, but instead it brought you to this one..." Midna said. Vanna raised an eyebrow, and she continued. "What if you get it back, and go to your world during a time when the man who wants to kill you either is dead or hasn't been born yet?"

Vanna was surprised that Midna actually had what seemed like a very helpful idea at first thought. Escaping to a different time period in her own world would be a perfect way to avoid him. He would probably make Zi keep searching to the ends of Hyrule's world for her, never having a clue that she had returned to their own world. He would have no idea of where, much less _when_ , she was.

At second thought, Vanna realized it was just another scheme to get her to work for Midna.

"How many _times_ do I have to tell you: I do not owe you. You. Owe. _Me,_ " she said.

"Do I _really?_ " Midna asked.

"Yes! This is all your fault! If it weren't for you, I could be at home right now living my life just like I used to, still having no clue about the truth!"

"You would have found out one way or another. If you found out at your home, wouldn't he have killed you immediately, since you would've been right there at his fingertips? That already happened once before, didn't it? All of this happening—all of these things you've been complaining about... They've all given you the chance to avoid a worse turn of events, don't you think?"

Vanna had been prepared to tell her off regardless of what she would say, but after Midna finished speaking, she was silent. Midna put things in a light that Vanna never saw them in. She had been so focused on the negatives of showing up in Hyrule that she failed to see the positives, and the positive Midna described was perhaps the most positive of all. Midna was completely reasonable—helpful, even—and Vanna hated it. Out of contempt for her, Vanna tried to think of a way that she might have been wrong, but all were marred by uncertainty. ' _Maybe if I found out at home, I would have had NEVA on me at the time, giving me the chance to escape right then and there; or maybe I could have just used my TPort to get far enough away that he could never catch up, maybe even finding a way to disable my tracking chip to make it harder._ ' Every one of the few scenarios she could think of started with _maybe_. As much as she wished things didn't have to be the way they really were, at least she knew with certainty that she had a chance. How _much_ of a chance she had was unbeknownst to her, but it was a chance nonetheless.

She looked down at her feet, curling up her fists. "You might be right..." Vanna quietly admitted. "But that _doesn't_ mean I owe you."

"Your loss. I was just trying to give you a little more incentive to go along with Link, since he wants you to."

"Yeah, I'm sure _that's_ really what this is all about," she said, rolling her eyes again. "Just know that if I do decide to go along with him, it won't be out of debt to you."

"That's okay. I'll accept it as payment for your debt even if you pretend that it's not. Isn't that so nice of me?" Midna said with a giggle.

With one final eye roll, Vanna turned and started walking away from her again. She decided on going to the secret alcove at the back of the graveyard, thinking that she'd feel weird pacing the village while the Gorons were standing around. She felt weird about hanging out around a graveyard, too, but at least it was nice and secluded. Once she was back there, she relaxed against the earthen wall. The alcove wasn't quite as pretty as it was at night time with the waterfalls no longer glowing, but it remained the most scenic place she'd ever seen with her own eyes. The springs in Faron and Ordon were quite close to holding that title, which made her glad about the prospect of going back down. She'd have relaxing places to go to attempt to clear her mind.

She knew that making a decision of whether to go along with Link or not would be hard, but it felt harder now that there was more to consider. Even if she decided on going with Link, she wouldn't know about going to her home in a different time upon getting NEVA back. If she did, then she had to decide on the past or future. The past opened up possibilities for paradoxes, while she had no idea at all what life in the future would be like. Wherever she would stay, she'd have to relearn how to live her life, and for all she knew, living in the past or future of her world could be worse than living in Hyrule and being on the run from Zi.

Soon enough, Vanna felt like she had thoroughly contemplated every aspect of her dilemma, yet she still felt so far from being able to make a decision. It all needed to start with the one decision she had realized she'd need to make the night before: would she rather die at the hands of a monster, or at the hands of Mr. Rider? She was continuing to weigh her options and potential outcomes when she heard Link say her name. Her eyes opened quickly and she looked around, but he wasn't in the alcove. She leaned over and looked through the hole she had crawled in through, and Link was crouched down on the opposite end.

"Are we leaving?" she asked.

Once he nodded, Vanna crawled out, and they left the graveyard together in silence. Link ended up mounting Telma's horse and leaving his to Vanna, presumably because he thought she wouldn't want to ride a horse with a dead person in the wagon behind it. She almost wished he would have just let her ride Telma's as she struggled to get up on the much taller Epona. She heard movement behind her, and then she felt hands grasp her sides and lift her up. Embarrassed, she quietly thanked Link as she settled onto Epona, and once he was back on Telma's horse, they were off.

As soon as they were out of Kakariko, Midna popped up and floated along with them between the horses' heads. " _So_ ," she said enthusiastically, "I gave Vanna a great idea earlier, Link! Vanna, why don't you tell him it?"

Link looked at Vanna expectantly. "Midna just gave me more options, really," she said. "If I go along with you and she gets my bracelet back, I could go back home, but either in the past or future where Mr. Rider couldn't find me, instead of staying in Hyrule. But I still don't know if I'm even going with you or not, so..."

"But you know he really wants you to," Midna said in a sing-song voice.

"If you don't want to, that's fine. It's all up to you," Link said.

Vanna felt herself tense up automatically. That was almost word-for-word what Mr. Rider had said to her when she was still trying to decide whether to use NEVA or not. She knew that the similarity didn't really mean anything—there was no way Link could have known—but just hearing Mr. Rider's voice in her head put her on edge.

"...If you stay, but not with me..." Link started again, "...would you maybe stay with Ilia? If her memory doesn't come back during her time in Ordon, Renado wants her to stay in Kakariko under his care until it does... I don't want her to be so alone."

Vanna felt a pang of misplaced jealousy just hearing how tenderly he spoke of Ilia, and she mentally berated herself for it. She never had a reason to feel so stupidly jealous before, but now she absolutely didn't. Even the craziest person who believed robots were people wouldn't want to actually be with one. She had no chance at all—not with him, not with anyone, and that realization hurt more than any of them. All of her hopes and dreams for a normal future had been stolen from her.

She simply nodded and looked back to the way they were headed. "I was planning on staying in Kakariko anyway if I did decide to stay. There's already that empty house I've been staying in there, and all."

"Well, if Ilia gets better and you change your mind, my offer for you to stay in my house while I'm away is still open."

She merely shook her head out of disbelief. "You're too nice. I don't get it," she said quietly.

"Why not? Are you planning on robbing me after all?" he said with amusement.

"No, it's just... We don't even know each other all that well, and you're still nice to me."

"That's how it's supposed to be. You're nice to people until they give you a reason _not_ to be nice."

Vanna pursed her lips. Given his circumstances, it made sense that he was so trusting from the start. He hadn't been raised in a place where you had to keep your house on lockdown for fear of being robbed, where you had no choice but to be initially distrustful because of the criminals and objectionable people that lurked around every corner. His home was nice, and so he was nice. Jersey City never allowed her to have the same naivety that Ordon Village allowed him; and even ignoring all of that, she was the one with the overbearing mother that pounded safety protocols into her head and barely let her out of sight. Since day one, Vanna was made to be wary of the world around her and all of its potential dangers.

"...And, I think we do know each other pretty well," he said. "Especially now that I know about your ... er, predicament."

She wasn't sure how much she agreed with that. She knew that he was a seventeen-year-old from Ordon Village; his parents died when he was eight; he was a left-handed swordsman with magical abilities that wrangled goats and rode a horse; he was good at sumo wrestling and he knew how to backflip; his best friend was Ilia; he loved kids and kids loved him back; he hadn't even met thirty people in his life; he needed glasses, read a lot of books, slept a lot, and never went to school; and he believed that the world was created by three Goddesses. When Vanna mentally recounted it all like that, it seemed like a decent amount of knowledge about him, but some of the most basic things were missing from that list. She didn't even know his last name or his favorite color.

Knowing that he still had questions about her ' _predicament_ ,' she thought she had found the perfect opportunity to distract herself from her racing thoughts and to keep the spotlight off of her, so she wouldn't have to try to give him answers to questions that she wasn't even sure of herself.

"Link?" she said.

"Hm?"

"What's your full name? Lincoln...?"

He gave her a weird look. "Link's not short for anything."

That was fair enough. People often thought Vanna was short for Savannah or Giovanna or something when it wasn't. "Okay, then. What's your last name?"

"My name is Link," he said slowly. "That's it."

"Really? No middle name, no last name? Just ... Link?" she said.

"Just Link," he affirmed.

"But what if multiple people named their kids Link?"

"Ordon's too small for that to happen."

"What if there was another Link living in Hyrule, then?"

He shrugged. "' _Link of Ordon_ ' would do just fine. There's no need for parents to give their kids _three names_. That kinda stuff is just for royalty. I think Princess Zelda's got three. I don't get it."

"Three might be a bit much, since middle names aren't that important, but it's crazy that you don't at least have a last name to trace your family with."

"What's the point of having middle names if they're not that important?"

"They're just like, second first names, and normally they're names of people in your family to ' _honor_ ' them. Like, my..." Vanna tensed up again, "... _dad's_ name was Lee, and my middle name is Lee."

"What's your last one?"

"Meadows." She hated saying it, now. It only tied her to her fake parents.

"So, you're Vanna Lee Meadows," Link said.

Impulsively, she said, "No, I'm not."

"What? You just said..."

"The real Vanna Lee Meadows is dead," she said. "I'm just Vanna, like how you're just Link."

Part of her wanted a new first name, too, now that she knew she wasn't the real Vanna, but she couldn't just let it go, not when she had always known herself as Vanna first and foremost. She had already lost enough of her old life in the past twenty-four hours.

"That'll help you fit in more, so that's good," Midna chimed in.

"It'll help me _if I stay_."

"You should," she muttered under her breath before retreating back into the shadows.

Vanna sighed and looked over at Link. "...What's your favorite color?"

* * *

Majority of their ride was spent asking and answering trivial questions. Vanna was expecting Link's questions to eventually morph into queries about her predicament, though it looked like he picked up that she wasn't exactly in the mood to talk more about that, and he seemed pleased enough finally getting to ask her just what exactly ' _Zelda games_ ' were (though her answer only served to confuse him more before he resigned to the idea that he would never quite wrap his head around it). Around the time they got to where Hyrule Field ended and the densely wooded Faron began, their horses slowed their pace without instruction, as if they knew they were nearing their destination. Link, too, had a change in demeanor the closer they got to Ordon. It seemed that Colin's quickly-approaching funeral reinvigorated everything Link had felt when he first learned of the boy's death, and he seemed right back to the way he had been.

As they passed by Ordon's Spirit's Spring, Vanna noticed that Ilia was sitting in front of the water, absentmindedly running her fingers through the sand. Ilia turned and glanced up at them for the brief moment they were visible in front of the open gates, but said nothing. Vanna decided that she would go to her after getting off Epona, and give her the chance she deserved. Besides that, she knew Ilia would be the only one in the village not busy grieving Colin, given that she still had no idea who he was. Vanna didn't want to intrude on everyone else's time of mourning.

They came to a stop just outside Link's house—the wagon was too wide to make it through to the main part of the village—and Vanna told him of her intention to go see Ilia. He nodded, not making any eye contact or sound at all. She tossed her leg over and slid off Epona, her feet hitting the ground with a quiet thunk, and she walked off after regaining her balance. When she was back just outside of the spring, she paused at the gate. Ilia didn't seem to hear her coming back. Vanna knocked on the gate to get her attention, and Ilia looked up again.

Ilia gave her a little grin. "You didn't have to knock. You can come in."

Vanna walked to her, quickly glancing over to the empty alcove where she had met up with the Hero's Shade numerous times and pondering where he went when he vanished. She sat down on her legs next to Ilia. Ilia looked at her, her eyes the most vibrant green color that almost seemed to sparkle in the daylight. Finding herself able to see better through her unreasonable jealousy now, Vanna thought that Ilia was, admittedly, kind of cute. She had a unique appeal, but an appeal nonetheless.

"So... How are you doing? Memory back yet?" Vanna asked.

Ilia shook her head and frowned, looking down at her fingers. "No. I thought that being back in my home village would bring up _something_ , but... I don't remember any of this place or any of these people at all."

"Well... Maybe you just need more time to see everything?" Vanna offered. She wondered if Ilia felt as awkward as she did.

Ilia sighed. "My ... _father_ , tried telling me everything about my life, and showing me all of my belongings, but nothing rung any bells. I'm not sure what else can be done besides waiting..."

"If it makes you feel any better... I can relate. I just found out that I lost my memories, too. Not all of them, but ... enough to make me mad."

"Mad?" Ilia said. "I'm not mad that I lost my memories... I'm just upset. It hurts me that the children and that man—my _father_ —look at me and see someone they know, only for me to look back at them and see strangers. I want to remember them, but I don't."

Something Mr. Rider said hit Vanna suddenly. He had told her that when she tore herself apart, he powered her back up after wiping her memories _again_. That little word had slipped right past her in her panicked state, and it was only now that she realized he had even said it. Something else had to have happened that he didn't tell her about, and realizing it only made her more furious. Knowing only that she tore herself apart and that her memories were really wiped twice was not enough to satisfy her. She deserved to know what else happened to her; but unlike Ilia, she had nobody who could at least try to fill in the gaps of her life for her, and she knew that the chance of recovering her lost memories was likely lower than Ilia's.

"...Are you okay?" Ilia asked.

Vanna blinked, coming back to her senses, her vision focusing on Ilia again. "Fine. I just... I just realized something. Sorry."

"Remember something?"

"Technically, but it wasn't something I forgot... Just something I never noticed before."

"Oh. Well, speaking of that... Did I know you beforehand, as well?"

"No. The other night was the first time we met. I'm not from Ordon."

"Ah, that's nice. That makes me feel better about not knowing your name," Ilia said, smiling. "What is it?"

She paused involuntarily. "It's—um, Vanna."

"Nice to properly meet you, Vanna. My name's Ilia, but I guess you probably figured that when that little girl kept calling me Ilia the other night, didn't you?"

She just nodded, even though she figured out that she was Ilia even before then. "So, uh, what were you doing out here?"

Ilia looked toward the spring, and up into the trees that surrounded it. "Praying. I was told that a Light Spirit resides in this spring, and that everyone was praying here for the children's and my safety. I thought it wouldn't hurt to pray for my memory back."

Not wanting to crush her dreams, Vanna bit her tongue and decided not to say anything about how the Light Spirits, if they truly existed, didn't like to listen very much. Despite all the prayers, Ilia still lost her memory, and above all, a child was dead.

"What about you?" Ilia asked, peeking back over at her.

Vanna shrugged, and looked to the spring like she did. "I have to make a really big decision soon, and it's weighing down on me. I came here to relax."

"If you don't mind me asking, what are you trying to decide?"

For a moment, Vanna considered making up a lie, or avoiding an answer altogether, but she chose vagueness instead. "I have to decide if I'm going to go along with somebody on a dangerous mission to help save the world, or if I'm going to settle down somewhere that I'm in danger. Those are my only choices."

"And they're both equally as dangerous?"

"Basically."

Ilia hummed. "Well... If I were you, I think I'd go on the mission."

Vanna's eyebrows drew together, and she looked at her. That wasn't the answer she would have expected from a simple farm girl, one with memory loss or not. "Why?"

Ilia looked back at her, almost as confused as she was. "To save the world, of course. And not only to save it, but to _see_ it. This world..." Ilia's vision returned to their surroundings once more, "...it's so beautiful, isn't it?"

Like her, Vanna again took in the scenery. It really was beautiful; more beautiful than anywhere she had ever seen back home. She had seen more monotone buildings reaching up into a polluted sky than anyone would ever wish for. Maybe she could get used to breathing fresh air and taking in all the new experiences this world had to offer. There were still more places to go, people to talk to, bravery to be gained and Light Spirits to be seen. Hiding in a shack would bring her nothing.

' _If I'm going to die_ ,' she thought, ' _I might as well die trying to defend a beautiful world and its innocent inhabitants._ '


	21. Back on Track

It was September 19th when they were preparing to leave Ordon Village for Kakariko. Vanna knew the estimate was rough and unreliable, but she couldn't stop herself from counting down the days she had left before she had to officially start to be worried about Zi's arrival. She had at least five days left—but that didn't stop her from worrying in the meantime. She had spent most of her days in Ordon sitting at the spring or with the goats frequently checking behind her, and her nights were spent staring into the dark at the vague outline of Link's door, listening to hear if the locked knob rattled. Only when she was around others—conscious others—did she feel she could let her guard down, but she was alone more than she would have liked. Link spent nearly all of his time with the mourning townspeople, and the only non-mourning person Vanna could have spent time with, except Midna, was Ilia, who couldn't get away from her father for too long.

"Vanna?"

Her eyes snapped away from whatever she had been unknowingly staring at and made contact with Link's. He was still frowning, just like she'd gotten used to seeing, but he looked mostly concerned, not just hurt.

"You all right?" he asked.

She nodded and picked up some bread off her neglected breakfast plate. "I'm fine."

"You've barely been eatin' food since we got here..." he said. She took a bite as if to prove him wrong, though she knew they both knew he was right. "...And I don't think you've gotten any sleep, either, have you?"

Vanna looked down at her plate, her fingers playing around with the food she couldn't bring herself to eat. "No. I just... I _can't_. It's like—every time I close my eyes, I picture Zi sneaking up on me and taking me home, and then Mr. Rider..." She sighed. "But I'm fine. Really. I stopped being hungry and tired days ago. I just wish I could sleep instead of having to be awake all the time..."

"If you say so," Link said, sounding unconvinced. He finished the last bite left on his plate. "Made your decision yet? You've had a lot of time to think since you've been awake."

"I did the first day we got here, I just haven't really had the chance to tell you."

He looked surprised for a second, and his frown didn't return afterward. "Oh. What'd you choose?"

She hesitated a moment, knowing that telling him her answer would finalize it. "I'm going with you, at least for now. Once I get my bracelet back, I might leave after a while if I feel like Zi is making my life too difficult when he gets here, but I guess we'll just have to see about that..."

Midna emerged from Vanna's shadow just then. "Good choice! You know that you _could_ get your bracelet back after we beat Lakebed Temple and get that last Fused Shadow, though, right? And if you get back to work quick, then that could be as early as _tomorrow_."

"I know, but I want to stay a bit longer just to see more of the world, and that'll give me more time to make my final decision," Vanna said.

"Wait _,_ are you two going back to the temple again without me?" Link asked.

"There's only one pair of that armor, and Vanna knows I'm not giving her her bracelet back if she doesn't help out, so..." Midna said.

Vanna gave Midna a quick glare. "Actually... I think we should only need one pair of the armor for us to go to the temple," she said.

They both looked at her curiously. Rather than explain herself with words, she decided to show them something she had realized she was capable of. She closed her mouth tightly before plugging her nose with her fingers. Pressure slowly began to build up in her chest, and it started to become painful around the thirty-second mark. The pain reached a high before it suddenly stopped hurting, and she felt fine. Even though her chest wasn't rising and falling as normal, she _felt_ normal, like there was nothing physically wrong with the fact that she wasn't breathing at all. Mentally, on the other hand, she was still just as freaked out as when she first tested her theory. It was the strangest, most unnatural thing, to not breathe and feel no negative consequences of it.

It seemed to take them both a few seconds to notice that Vanna wasn't breathing, then a few longer for them to realize the implications. By the time the pain had settled, Link looked amazed, while Midna just looked amused. Midna started to laugh, and Vanna allowed herself to breathe again.

"So you've been _terrified_ of drowning this whole time when you don't even need air anyway?" Midna said.

"Better that you found that out now than never. Least now we can go together so I ain't gotta worry about you getting kidnapped and me not being able to do anything about it," Link said. He stood up from his chair. "Reminds me..."

He walked over to his bookshelf and started to pull some of the thinner books out to check their covers before sliding them back into their spots. He eventually found what he wanted and pulled it out completely, and then he brought it over to Vanna. The last word on the red cover caught her eye first. It looked like _Pabats_ , but she immediately knew that it said _Robots_. It took her longer to decipher the middle word as _Ancient_.

"' _The Ancient Robots_ ,'" she read aloud.

"Not sure how factual the events are since it's a children's book an' all... But I thought you might like to see it. It's about robots and humans working together to mine materials and build things, and fight off evil robots."

She opened it up. On the pastedown was a drawing of a Hylian man and a peanut-shaped thing with a wonky face, a sort of pirate hat, and giant three-fingered hands connected to the peanut body by squiggly lines.

" _That's_ what the robots here looked like?" she asked. It was no wonder Link seemed wowed by how human she looked.

"If that book's got it right, then most of 'em, yeah. The evil ones later in the book look more human. Not as much as you, though," Link said. "I'm gonna go ahead and get Ilia and say bye to everyone. I'll yell for you to come out when we're ready to leave."

Vanna simply nodded in response, and he walked out. Unfortunately for her, Midna didn't slip into his shadow and leave with him, and instead stayed floating in the air where she was. Vanna hoped that if she didn't look at Midna then she wouldn't start a conversation, so she tried to focus on reading the book. ' _A long ..._ yule? _No,_ time _ago, in the desert_...'

Midna cleared her throat.

'... _there was a_ phce _... oh,_ race _of people called the Ancient Robots. ..._ People? _The metal peanuts? Maybe it's not just Link. Everyone from Hyrule must be crazy..._ '

She cleared her throat again, louder this time.

Vanna groaned and slammed the book down. "Oh my _god_ , what do you want?"

"I just have a question, is all."

"No."

"You don't even know if it's a yes or no question!"

Vanna sighed. "What is it?"

"We're leaving for Lakebed Temple tomorrow morning. Do you think you could convince Link to come with us then, or do we have to go by ourselves again?"

"He just said we're going together."

"But he didn't specify a time. He said a few days ago that he was considering staying with Ilia in Kakariko Village awhile after they would get back from here. I don't want to wait around any longer. It's been almost three weeks, and we've still only got two out of three Fused Shadows."

"If you want to go so bad tomorrow, then _you_ convince him," Vanna said.

"He wouldn't listen to me back when he first found the kids in Kakariko Village and I was trying to get him out of there! If there's one thing he won't budge on, it's staying with those friends of his for as long as he can..."

"So what makes you think he'll listen to me?"

"You can tell him you're worried about your safety hanging around in such an empty village where you'd be easy to spot. How's that Zi guy gonna make it inside of an underwater temple without the Zora armor?"

Vanna gulped. Monsters and all, the temple did seem safer. Even if Zi managed to get in there, either via teleportation or some other means, which didn't seem likely to happen, the layout of the temple was sprawling and confusing enough that he probably wouldn't be able to find her anyway.

"Guess I'll try," she said.

When a satisfied Midna dove back into her shadow, Vanna opened up the book and started reading it again. The only good thing about her not being entirely literate in Hylian was the fact that having to pay close attention to every individual letter made reading a great distraction from her thoughts. She was only about halfway through the book when Link called for her from outside. She carried it out with her, planning to put it in the wagon since she had left her magic pouch in Kakariko Village.

She was surprised to find that Ilia wasn't the only person getting into the wagon. Beth, Talo, and Malo were all coming along.

"What's up with all of this?" Vanna said to Link.

He picked up Malo and helped him get in. "The kids managed to convince their parents to let them go back to Kakariko."

"What? Why...?"

"They all want to be with Ilia to help her get her memory back, but Beth also wants to keep the Zora prince company, Talo wants to stand guard there to make sure everyone gets to safety if more Bulblins show up, and Malo wants to, uh..."

"Run my business," Malo said from inside the wagon.

"Apparently the four-year-old is running a business," Link mumbled.

"Oookay, then..." Vanna said. "Um, before we go, can I ask you something?" Link nodded, and she asked her question quietly. "Can we go to the temple in the morning?"

Link looked inside the wagon quickly, then back to her. "Any reason you want to leave so soon...?"

She frowned and shrugged. "I'm just worried about Zi... There aren't many good places for me to hide in Kakariko, but I don't think he could get into the temple. I know you really love the kids and all, but... I'd love to not be kidnapped and murdered."

"Okay," Link said with a nod. "If you think you'd be safer, then we'll go in the morning."

* * *

"That'll be 300 Rupees."

Vanna's jaw dropped. As soon as they had gotten back to Kakariko, Malo went into the shop near the entrance of the village that she had seen him go into before, and early the following morning she went inside. He told her, quite rudely, that if she wanted something, she was to buy it, even though it was an unmanned shop that he had merely decided to take over. When Vanna expressed interest in the shield and binoculars on display—she thought it'd be best if she and Link both had their own metal shields rather than one of them having to settle for the smaller wooden one, and the binoculars would have been handy for Link—she was hoping that maybe Malo would say he was just joking about the whole situation.

"Okay, look, I have no idea what the value of any amount of Rupees means in Hyrule, but that seems like a _lot_ of money to be asking for merchandise that was never yours in the first place," Vanna said.

"So I take it you don't have the money," Malo said.

"No, but—"

"The door is behind you."

"Are you kidding me? This isn't even your shop! You can't just walk into an abandoned shop and say everything in it is yours!"

"Didn't you walk into that abandoned house and say it's yours?"

Her jaw dropped again, and she struggled to find a way to make herself not seem like a hypocrite. "D-don't you turn this around on me! That's _totally_ different!"

"Tell you what, I'll give you a special deal just this once to commemorate the grand opening of Malo Mart," he said. "...299 Rupees."

She should have thought ahead and stolen the stupid shield and binoculars while he wasn't in there. She considered just hopping over the counter and grabbing them—what was he gonna do, bite her ankle?—but she left instead, planning to ask Link if he could get Malo to give him them for free before setting off. He had been in the Elde Inn eating breakfast when Vanna left for the shop. When she got back, he was finished eating, and he had had his arms crossed on the table with his head resting on them. She walked over and tapped him on the shoulder, and he raised his head and wiped at his eyes as he yawned. Seeing him so sleepy made Vanna start to feel tired for the first time in days.

"You wanna go now?" he asked.

"Yeah, but I want you to go to ' _Malo Mart_ ' first and see if you can grab some things," she said. "I couldn't get Malo to give me what I wanted..."

He stood up, raising an eyebrow. "What kinda stuff does he got in there already?"

As they left the Elde Inn, Vanna explained to Link the things Malo had in the store and why she wanted them. He also thought that it was a good idea to get them before going, but he said he didn't have the money, either, since his job as a wrangler didn't pay all that well. Still, he agreed to attempt to coax Malo into lowering the price, or at least letting him pay later, hoping that his close relationship with the child might work in their favor.

It didn't, and they left on Epona with no binoculars and the two shields they'd already had in the first place.

Before they got on Epona, Link had stashed his sword and shield into his pouch, which made riding behind him a lot more comfortable than it had been the last time. Without thinking about it, Vanna ended up resting her head against his back and closing her eyes. Neither the hard material of the saddle beneath them nor the way they bounced on it was enough to stop her from starting to doze off. What did, however, stop her dozing from turning into sleeping was the feel of something small and cold hitting her cheek.

Her eyes blinked open, and just as they did, another something managed to fall right into one of them. It took her a moment to realize that it had been a raindrop. More and more started to come down, and in no time, it was absolutely _pouring_ , so hard that each of the droplets stung as they hit her. She tilted her head down as much as she could behind Link to minimize the amount that could smack against her skin. It was annoying that they were going to have to be soaking and cold before even getting inside the temple, but a part of her was relieved that the rain had stopped her from falling asleep against Link. She felt embarrassed enough that she had basically been cuddling up to his back for that short amount of time.

The rain continued to pound down for the rest of their lengthy ride to the lake, effectively being a sleep deterrent for Vanna. She was relieved when they made it down to the bank where the overhanging walls around the lake protected them from the rain.

"Can I have the Zora armor?" Link asked.

After she managed to retrieve all of its components from her pouch, Link went into a large, dark tunnel to get dressed. Vanna decided to change out of the outfit Luda had given her and wear the outfit she'd been wearing when she got to Hyrule, along with with the pants she'd borrowed from Uli, figuring that would be easier to swim in than a knee-length dress. A minute passed after she had finished getting changed and Link still hadn't come back out, so she assumed he was having trouble figuring out how to wear the pieces just like she did.

She went ahead and got into the water to mentally prep herself for what was coming. The water felt much colder than it had the last time, though she wasn't sure if it was because it was actually colder or because she wasn't wearing the wetsuit. Either way, it was miserable, but not having to go through the temple alone was worth the price of freezing her ass off.

Holding her breath, Vanna fully submerged herself in the water, and she encountered something she hadn't considered. She had no idea how to stop water from going up her nose, other than to hold it with her fingers, and that would make it even harder for her to swim than it already was. She knew that swimmers were somehow capable of doing it, but it was something she never learned how to do as a someone who always avoided going completely underwater. While contemplating about it, a thought crossed her mind. If she had fake lungs that didn't truly need oxygen, it wouldn't matter if they filled with water either, right?

Vanna let go of her nose and let the water flood inside to test her idea. An uncomfortable feeling of fullness built up in her chest, but she didn't feel like she was dying, at least—it was almost more uncomfortable mentally, just like it was when it hit her that she didn't need air in the first place. Such a perk should have made her happy, but it only made her be filled with an overwhelming sense of dreadfulness because it reminded her that she wasn't the human she longed to be.

She saw something from the bottom of the lake that looked to be swimming closer to her, and she realized it was a Zora. She surfaced so she'd be able to talk better and coughed all of the water out. The Zora's head popped up out of the water not long after hers. Vanna couldn't tell right away if it was one of the ones she'd seen the previous week or not.

"Oh! Hero! Is it really you?!" the Zora said. Apparently, it was one of the ones Vanna had seen. Now that they were above water and Vanna could both see and hear the Zora better, she was reasonably confident that it was female.

Vanna glanced over to the tunnel that Link still hadn't come out of. "Yeah, it's me. The Hero."

"I thought those were your eyes! You're no longer wearing the Zora armor, so I had to ask to be sure." She tilted her head. "You're female?"

' _You're one to talk_ ,' Vanna thought. "Surprise?"

She smiled, giving Vanna a good look at her pointy teeth. "It is a bit of a surprise! The Hero was described as a Hylian male in our legends, and... You're not even Hylian, are you? Ah, but, it's no matter—legends don't always play out how they're told. What matters is that you made it out of the temple alive! We didn't see you come out, so we assumed the worst. How was it?"

"I didn't see as many monsters as I expected, but I'm still not done in there. I'm going back and finishing up."

Just then, Link walked out of the tunnel fully geared up. The armor fit him much better than it had fit Vanna, so he was able to wear the pieces she couldn't. Looking at him, she realized that if the thigh armor had fit her, the lizard thing wouldn't have been able to cut her leg and send her life into an intense downward spiral. She couldn't help but wonder how different things would have turned out if she only had been able to wear that one piece of armor.

"Who is this wearing your garb?" the Zora asked.

"That's my friend that I'm taking with me inside the temple. I'm allowing him to wear the outfit," Vanna said.

"But what about you, Hero? You're not a Zora, you can't survive underwater without it!"

Vanna reached up above the water and dismissively waved her hand. "I'll be fine. Hero powers, you know..."

She didn't look like she believed Vanna. "I hope so. I will be praying for your safety."

"Thanks," Vanna muttered. Those prayers were going to do nothing to help them.

The Zora bowed her head and went back underwater, and Vanna looked over to Link.

"I kind of already lied to them when I first came here and said I was the Hero so they'd let me in," she explained. "Sorry for stealing your thunder."

"It's all good, _Hero_ ," Link said, grinning. He got in the water and swam over to her. "Guess you can lead me to the temple, since I'm your sidekick for today."

She swam farther out into the lake with Link beside her until they were above the entrance to the temple to minimize the amount of time she'd have to spend underwater, and then she pulled out the iron boots from her pouch. Once they were on her feet, Vanna started sinking faster than Link could swim downward. She came to a stop at the bottom of the lake, and she had already taken the boots off and put them away before Link caught up with her.

Since the opening of the tunnel leading inside the temple was so small, Link had to swim in first, and Vanna followed the light that shone from the pendant he wore. As they got to the part where the tunnel went upward toward the end, she realized that perhaps it was for the better that they couldn't get that second metal shield from Malo. She hadn't been thinking about the giant jellyfish swimming near the end of the tunnel. If her bones were made of metal and she had a metal sword on her, then she already had to be highly conductive; it was bad enough that Link already had his own metal shield and sword, and adding yet another a metal shield to the mix would have made things even worse. It made her worry for his sake. From experience, she knew that she could handle being shocked by the jellyfish, but she didn't know how bad it could be for Link.

Link swam up by himself, not even noticing that she stayed behind at the bottom until he was already practically out of the tunnel. She waved her arm to urge him to go ahead out, and she didn't start to swim up until he got the message. Vanna remembered getting shocked the last time she went through the tunnel, and how it had been because she was looking down at the jellyfish lower in the tunnel as she continued to swim upward, so she decided that this time she wouldn't look back at all. She passed the first one with no problem, and as she swam closer to the side of the tunnel opposite the jellyfish that had stung her before, she thought that she was in the clear—until it suddenly decided to propel itself closer to her and started generating electricity before she had time to react.

Vanna could just barely hear Link yell from above the water. She wanted so badly to scream for him to pull her out, but she couldn't speak, and she knew that realistically things would have been worse if he touched her anyway. What felt like an eternity later, the jellyfish let up, and she started swimming again as fast as she could. Link reached into the water and helped get her out, and she coughed out as much water as she could.

"Are you okay?!" Link asked.

"I'm _fine_ ," Vanna said, voice high. She turned her head away from him and wiped at her eyes. Since she got to Hyrule she'd been crying more often than she ever did before, and it made her feel like such a _loser_ —and crying in front of him made it even worse. "It—it already happened before..."

Link was silent for minutes while Vanna sat there crying from the pain, and all she could think of was how little he had to think of her.

"...Do you want to go to sleep?" he gently asked. "It always makes me feel better..."

"What about—what about monsters?" she said.

"There are none in this room, and even if some end up coming in here, I'll kill 'em. And you said yourself Zi probably can't get in here... But I'll take care of him too if he does. You're completely safe. You can finally get some sleep."

She heard shuffling from his direction, and when she peeked over, he was going through his pouch. He pulled out his green tunic and walked farther back from the water, and then folded his tunic up and laid it on the ground. He looked at her and patted it.

"Not much of a pillow... But it's better than the hard floor," he said.

Out of pure stubbornness, Vanna initially wanted to decline his offer, but just imagining herself going to sleep made it so tempting. She walked over and lay down with her head on the makeshift pillow, and she closed her eyes.

"Goodnight, Vanna."


	22. Mother

After Vanna woke up, things happened in a blur. They had trouble finding their way through Lakebed Temple because it seemed like every door they opened led to the same area as the last. It didn't help that Vanna had already completed a chunk of the temple. Her memory of the layout was so hazy that she couldn't remember where she left off, only that she had already been in the temple, and the map that she'd gotten before had succumbed to water damage and was left an incomprehensible mess.

Finally, they got to the room where she left off, a room that she remembered very clearly—the room with the lizard thing on top of the sideways gear high above the ground. This time, the lizard thing wasn't there, but rather some other type of enemy that she'd never seen before. It almost looked like a conglomeration of a lizard thing and a Bulblin, but for some reason Vanna couldn't get a good enough look at it to really make out many details. Link told her not to worry, that he would take care of it. She stood by the door and watched with worry as Link engaged in a battle with the monster.

All seemed to be going well until the monster managed to stab its sword right through Link's midsection. The color drained from Link's face as the monster laughed and pulled its sword out, letting blood gush out of him. It sliced through a paralyzed Link again, and again, and again, until there was more of Link covered in blood than not. With one final, powerful swing of its sword, the monster sent Link falling off of the gear, and Vanna watched with horror as Link's body slammed into the ground far below.

Her body jolted and her eyes snapped open. She sat upright quickly and looked around the room. She was all alone, back in the room she had fallen asleep in earlier. Her thoughts were swirling with confusion. Link died, then all of a sudden, she was back here?

 _Link_ _died_. As the words rung through Vanna's mind, tears welled up in her eyes, and her heart started to pound heavily in her chest. She buried her head in her hands.

She had no idea what to do. That wasn't how things were supposed to happen. Link was supposed to go through all of the temples, to defeat Ganondorf at the end and save everyone. Without him, this world was doomed. And it was all because she had stood on the sidelines in fear. She didn't save him. He was dead because of her.

"Vanna, what's wrong?"

She moved her hands down and looked at where the voice had come from. Link was walking out from behind one of the columns that surrounded the circular room.

She was so confused that all she could do was sit there and stare. He didn't have that ethereal look to him like Colin's ghost did, so she was sure he wasn't a ghost—but how could he have possibly been standing there? She watched him _die_.

Link walked over and crouched down in front of her. "Hello? Anybody home?" he said, snapping his fingers in front of her face.

"What—what _happened?_ " Vanna said. "How'd you get back here?!"

"Uh... What?" he laughed out.

"What do you mean ' _what?!_ ' You got stabbed and you fell like a billion feet! You _died!_ "

"Vanna, none of that stuff happened."

"Yes it _did!_ I saw it! I was standing right there, and you—"

"Everything is fine," Link said, reaching over and grabbing her shoulders. He smiled, the sort of comforting smile you give to a scared child to calm them. "It was just a bad dream, and you're awake now."

A bad dream... She had been dreaming?

"I've... I've never dreamt before," she said.

Link's eyebrows raised. "Never?"

"Never."

"Well, you have now, because I promise you it was a dream. You fell asleep while I was sitting right next to you, and I just went up to go to the bathroom, and then you woke up."

"But it felt so real..." Vanna said with a frown.

"They do, sometimes." He patted her shoulders and let go of her. "Do you wanna go back to sleep for a while? It's only been a couple hours."

"No... I don't think I'll be able to get back to sleep, and besides, you'd probably be tired and want to go to sleep by the time I'd wake up."

"You sure?"

"I'm sure," she said.

They both stood up, and as Link stashed away his green tunic into his pouch, Vanna pulled out the bow and quiver from hers and slung them over her shoulder. She wished that she could have had more time to sleep, but she believed what she said; there was no way she was getting back to sleep, not with the image of Link's mutilated body lying lifeless on the ground stuck in her head.

Something he had said sunk in suddenly as they started to walk to the door. "...There's a bathroom in here?"

"There is now."

"Ew!" she said, playfully smacking his arm.

He laughed—an actual, real laugh. Vanna had heard chuckles out of him, but nothing like that before. It made her laugh, too, and she realized that it was the first time she had since she found out she was a Synthuman. It felt inappropriate to be laughing over something so juvenile in the circumstance they were in, but it was the perfect thing to break the tension that had been hanging over both of them for weeks.

"You two are such _children_ ," Midna said. "No wonder you get along with the village kids so well..."

At her comment, it came to Vanna's awareness that she still didn't know how old Midna was. She had a very high-pitched voice and very tiny body, but that tiny body of hers had such wide hips that Vanna knew she couldn't have been a child, at least, whether she was a member of a strange shadow race or not. Maybe she was fifteen or so, Vanna thought. She had the _attitude_ of a fifteen-year-old girl, for sure.

"Midna, how old are you?" she asked.

"Nineteen. Older than both of you. Especially you, now, since you're really only three, aren't you?"

Vanna's pace slowed. In the technical sense, Midna was right; if she'd been created when she thought she was fourteen, then that really meant she had only existed for three years.

"I _am_ seventeen. Even if robots don't mature physically, I've still matured mentally in the three years since I was created as a fourteen-year-old. It doesn't matter if my physical body was only created three years ago. I don't _act_ like a three-year-old, I don't _think_ like a three-year-old, and I don't even come close to _looking_ like a three-year-old. There's nothing _three_ about me," she said. She knew she was talking to herself more than she was to Midna, but she couldn't stop herself. Her fists curled up. "I'm _seventeen_."

"Sheesh, I got it. I wasn't trying to hit a nerve," Midna said. "...You know, your sense of humor hasn't matured very much."

"Because laughing at people's misery like you do is _so_ much better than laughing at toilet humor, right?" Vanna said.

"Okay, it's moving on time," Link said, lifting up the door.

Vanna would've liked to have gone against Link's declaration that the conversation was over, but her attention was diverted elsewhere. Just like when she went through the temple by herself, there was a lizard guy hanging out by the door on the opposite end of the bridge, and it started racing over.

"I already killed that thing last time! Why is it back?!" she said.

Once they were on the bridge and the door was closed behind them, Link grabbed his sword and ran forward to meet the lizard guy halfway, and Vanna was reminded of her dream. She tried to tell herself that there was no way anything about it could have come true—a dagger couldn't go straight through Link's armor, and he couldn't fall off the bridge with its high railings—but she was still worried about everything going wrong.

Link slashed at it four times, and after the fourth strike sent the lizard guy falling to its back, Link jumped up over it and stabbed his sword down right through its chest. Mere seconds had passed from the time of the first slash to the monster's explosive death.

"...You are _way_ too good at this stuff," Vanna said, walking to him. "But seriously, how did it come back?" She was about to say ' _It's not like this is a video game_ ,' but then it hit her that it kind of was, and Link had no idea what respawning in a video game was anyway so that would have meant nothing to him.

"I told you before that evil awakens monsters," he said after they started walking down the rest of the bridge. "There's a strong presence of evil in this temple right now. I know you're gonna say no, but can't you _feel_ it?"

"I feel cold, damp, and slightly freaked out because we're in an underwater temple with lizard monsters, but that's about it."

"I know it was one of the Lizalfos that cut you and all, but I don't think you should be so scared of them. It was probably only a fluke that it got you. They're just big lizards, and they're some of the weakest monsters."

"' _Just big lizards_ ,'" she repeated in a mocking tone. "They're lizards as big as humans that walk on two feet, wield daggers, and have axes on their tails. We don't have _anything_ like that in my world."

They got to the double doors at the end of the bridge, and they each opened the door on the side they were standing on. Ooccoo was walking right past the doors with her son flying by her head.

"...Or anything like them," Vanna added.

At Vanna's voice, Ooccoo stopped and turned to her, and Vanna noticed that Ooccoo was holding her phone in her wings.

"You're back!" Ooccoo said. "I didn't think I'd see you here again. We're still not done searching for what we came to find. This place is so big and hard to navigate! The only thing we've found is this strange mirror that was buzzing a few hours back..."

"That's not a mirror, it's my... Nevermind what it is. It's mine," Vanna said.

She reached down to grab it from her. The first thing she noticed was that the screen was cracked—so much for it being ' _shatter resistant_ '—and then she noticed that Ooccoo had somehow managed to unlock her phone and open the camera app. No wonder she had thought it was a mirror. Upon noticing that the newest picture looked different from anything Vanna had ever taken, she opened up her pictures. Ooccoo had accidentally taken dozens of photos of herself. It might have been cute if it wasn't so creepy.

Vanna closed both of the apps and found that she had twelve missed texts, explaining the buzzing Ooccoo had heard. All of them came up as being sent from a single person in her contacts—Mom.

_Hi sweetheart. When I gave Mr. Rider my phone to explain everything to you, he left to talk to you privately, but he told me later that you were very upset. I didn't get to tell you my whole side of the story. I hope you can forgive me for lying to you, but I want you to know that in my heart I was never lying. You're not a robot to me, you're my daughter, and I would never purposefully hurt you. I love you more than you'll ever know. Please talk to me when you can. Be safe, Vanna._

_You still haven't answered me. Please let me know that you're okay._

_How are you doing sweetie? I see you haven't read my past messages. I hope you've just been busy and that something bad hasn't happened to you. I'm worried. Text back when you can._

_Or are you ignoring me? I understand that you're upset but that's no reason to worry your mother so much. I think I've got twice the grays I used to have since before you left. I love you and I only want to know that you're safe. You don't have to say much. Just reply 'yes' to let me know that you're still alive, okay?_

_I really do believe you're my daughter. Mr. Rider has told me that it's not healthy for me to pretend that you're her, but to me it's not pretending. I believe you have her spirit, that she decided to be reborn in you so that she could be with mommy again. You're my baby girl and I love you._

_This morning I went through old photos of you. You were such a sweet, beautiful baby. The first time you called me Mama, I cried. When Mr. Rider brought you back to me and I heard you call me Mom for the first time in 10 years, I went to my room and cried again. I want to hear your voice. Call me when you're able to._

_Mr. Rider has told me he's nearly done with the devices to bring you home. Please don't be mad at me anymore when you come back._

_I love you._

_Please answer me._

_Please answer me._

_Please answer me._

_Please answer me._

"...What language is that?"

Vanna looked over at Link, still feeling stunned from what she'd read. "English. It's, um, really the same language we're speaking. The letters just look kind of different where I come from." She opened up her pouch and dropped her phone in there, then looked to Ooccoo. "Want in?"

"Yes, please!" Ooccoo said before she and her son flew inside.

"You look upset from whatever you read," Link said.

"I'm... I don't know how I feel right now," Vanna said.

That wasn't entirely true. There were two things she felt, that she knew she was feeling: shock, and pity. Vanna had been assuming that her ' _mom_ ,' Daina, deserved the same hatred she felt for Mr. Rider because she was just as complicit in misleading her, but now she knew that wasn't the whole story. Daina wasn't evil—she was a mother whose mismanaged grief over losing her daughter turned into delusion.

And now, Mr. Rider was keeping her in the dark. She really thought that he was going to have Zi bring Vanna home only to drop her off into her arms, when the reality was that Mr. Rider wanted to kill her.

She sighed. "Let's just go."

* * *

With foreknowledge of the rotating staircase and pulley system, it took significantly less time for them to get back to where Vanna had left off than it did for her the first time. She had never gotten to put the key she acquired to use in the room with the strange oversized insect in its seemingly impenetrable water bubble. Link identified it as a Chu Worm—a name which matched with what he had informed Vanna were actually called Chuchus (that she still preferred the name Grape Jellies for)—but he admitted that he had absolutely no idea how to kill it, either, so they hurried to get into the room that had been locked off.

"The Zoras really enjoy their giant circular rooms," Vanna said.

The floor spiraled up around the walls, leaving a gap around the tall platform that stood in the very center of the room. A pulley hung above the platform, which would more than likely need to be pulled, but the gap made it impossible to get to from where they were. Her initial thoughts were that they would either have to get something long enough to form a makeshift bridge over to it, or they'd have to ascend the spiraling floor until they would get up high enough to manage to jump over the barrier onto it, but she got the feeling that the answer to their problem would somehow be more absurd.

Their only hurdle was that the side of the floor they were on was a dead end. They'd have to get over to the spiraling floor by climbing down about fifty feet of vines and climbing up another fifty to get to the other side. Vanna was hit with a pang of regret again for not bringing her TPort—it would have made things _so_ much easier if she could have just told it to teleport her fifteen feet in front of her—but she was relieved that she'd at least be getting NEVA back soon enough.

It took an eternity to get down and then all the way back up, and Vanna lost track of how many times she'd started to lose her grip and almost fell, but they made it. After another of eternity walking up the incline and Link killing the few Tektites on it, the floor stopped going up and instead went straight to the side. There was yet another pulley, and a door on a higher path above the floor that they couldn't reach. Vanna thought that perhaps pulling the pulley would have done something to allow them to get into the door. When Link pulled it, the door raised up the wall, and she realized it wasn't actually a door at all; it was a floodgate. Water surged out of the opening and rushed down the floor. They both looked over the barrier, and the water had already gotten to the bottom and started to fill up the gap below.

"So when it's full we'll have to swim over and get the other pulley," Vanna said. That was a much better and more clever alternative than anything she'd thought of.

"Guess we oughta head on down," Link said.

They started to walk back toward the slope, and just as they got there, Link sat down. Vanna was about to ask him what he was doing, but after he scooted forward the tiniest bit, the gushing water made him start sliding down. She quickly followed his lead and slid down after him. She had never been on any sort of water slide before out of irrational fear, but it was hands down the most fun she'd had in weeks. Still not enough to make her not hate the temple, though.

Link was already almost to the pulley by the time Vanna got down to the bottom. Like with the pulley above, a floodgate opened when Link pulled it, allowing water to flow into the room they had come from. She had previously been curious why there were sections of the floor lower than the rest, but now she realized that they were channels for the water.

After they got out, they attempted to follow the channel, but a gate in the ring-shaped room barred them from going straight forward. Their only option was to go through the room that had had the Lizalfos, and out around the other side. Vanna's heart started to beat faster with every step they took toward the door.

"...Oh," she said after Link opened the door.

It wasn't there.

"Were you expecting something different in here?" Link asked.

"When I came in here by myself there was a Lizalfos on the gear, and the gear wasn't spinning," she said.

"Maybe it fell off when the gear started spinning," he suggested.

"I guess." Whether it simply didn't respawn, or if it did respawn and died without being killed, Vanna was happy that the monster was still gone.

The fact that the gear was spinning made it more nerve-racking to hop onto it and off of it, but they safely got to the other side, where they were able to walk around and continue following the channel. It led back out to the main room, where it simply flowed right off the edge. The water that filled the center of the room looked to be much higher up than it had been before.

"So we filled up the center with more water," Link said. "What now? Go through the other side?"

"I don't think we're done with this side yet, though," Vanna said, pulling out the map. "The lower half of the room with the gear has rooms that I couldn't get to before when it wasn't spinning. There are these things dangling from the bottom of the gear, and now that it's moving we can ride one around to those doors. We should probably head down and see what's back there first."

It was only as they went around and maneuvered the stairs to get to where they wanted that Vanna noticed there was a locked door on the cylindrical structure that held up the staircase. The chains and lock on it were more ornate than the other ones, leading her to conclude that it, somehow, had to be the door that would lead to the boss. It seemed like such an incredibly small area to house the boss—Morpheel, she remembered—and it made her hope that the boss would be small to go with it. Regardless, they currently had no key, and no way to reach the door anyway because of the water level not being high enough.

The first room that they tried to go into only had a key and a gate that they couldn't get to move, so they had to go back and through the second one. Another door past it required the key they'd just gotten, and Vanna couldn't help but groan when Link opened the door. They were going to have to swim completely underwater again through another dark tunnel. While there were a few giant jellyfish like in the tunnel leading inside, and a giant clam that looked very intent on eating them toward the end, they thankfully made it out of the tunnel unharmed in less than a minute.

After they pushed a manhole cover open enough for them to get out of the tunnel, they stood in a large room that they had somewhat been able to see through the gates. It was circular, as Vanna had come to expect, though right away it was clear that the room was unlike the rest. The walls were covered in a nasty green film, the shallow water was dirty, and it just _smelled_. Toward the middle of the room were two tadpoles the size of small dogs, with glowing red eyes and eerily human thick purple lips. They started racing toward Link and Vanna, but it only took two little jabs from Link's sword for them to explode away.

"Starting to regret saying we should've come back here..." Vanna said.

Something round dropped down suddenly. Upon impact with the ground, it burst open to reveal another one of the tadpoles, and three more followed it. As Vanna looked up, her regret skyrocketed. Hanging on the ceiling was an enormous frog-like creature with dozens of eggs embedded into its back.

As if it knew that it had been seen, it grumbled loudly and let itself fall from the ceiling. The floor shook as it landed, and they were splashed with the nasty water. Vanna heard Link spit and groan, and judging by the expression on his face when she looked over at him, she could only guess that some of it had landed in his mouth. The frog let out another gurgling roar from its puffy lips, and it wiggled its disgustingly gelatinous body, sending all of its babies flying out of its back.

Vanna got her gun out as fast as she could knowing it'd be quicker and easier to shoot them with that than with arrows, and then she helped Link take them out. She felt guilty killing them, not only because they couldn't even hurt her and Link, but because their mother was right there, flopping around the room. With each tadpole Vanna killed, she could only imagine Mr. Rider killing her right in front of Daina. She felt like _she_ was the monster, not any of them.

Countless shots and stabs later, Link and Vanna had killed every last one of the tadpoles. The giant frog wailed and jumped up in the air higher than seemed possible, and Vanna realized that it was going to try to land on them and squish them. Watching as it started to come down and its shadow got bigger, they ran out of the way. It seemed to knock itself out when it flopped down, and Link took advantage of that by slashing at it, but Vanna only stood to the side and watched.

Feeling bad about it made her feel stupid, but she couldn't help it. All the other monsters they had come across tried to kill them from the get-go, and the frog only wanted to kill them after they killed its babies. It was hard for her to see it as the monster it was when its actions were reasonable. What mother _wouldn't_ try to kill the people that killed her babies? Maybe it was the fact that she barely got any sleep, or maybe it was maternal instincts...

' _But I can't even have my own babies_.'

She couldn't believe that it was while watching Link stab a gigantic frog that she thought of that ramification for the first time.

The frog screeching and thrashing around drew Vanna out of her thoughts. It jerked backward a final time before spitting something out and falling to the ground as a quickly blackening heap. As it exploded, the slime that covered the object it had spit out dissipated into the murky water.

"A clawshot!" Link said excitedly. "I've read about these. It can grab onto things and pull you to places."

He grabbed it and put his left arm into it. The claw on the opposite end of it shot out, staying attached by a metal chain. After going as far as it presumably could, the claw and chain fell down to the ground, and then they were retracted back into the device.

"...Do monsters normally have babies?" Vanna asked.

Link turned and gave her a confused look at her sudden question. "Well, yeah, how else would they get here?"

She shrugged. "You made it seem like monsters just ' _awakened_ ' and showed up out of nowhere."

"They have to be born in the first place to be called back to the earth, 'cause you can't be awakened if you never existed. We just haven't come across any other younger monsters yet," he said. There was a long pause of neither of them knowing what to say. "...Do you feel guilty about killing the little ones?"

She shrugged again, and Link sighed.

"Vanna, they're _monsters_. If we hadn't killed them, then they would have grown up to be just like the one that had them. Imagine _dozens_ of those things, fully grown, infesting this temple. They would've destroyed it. Killing them was necessary."

"I _know_ , but..." Vanna trailed off, running her hands through her hair. She huffed. "I know I'm being ridiculous. I just have a lot of stuff on my mind right now that really isn't helping..."

"Need to talk about it?"

She pursed her lips. Link's offer was more than appreciated—his compassion made her feel all warm and fuzzy, and then even more stupid because the little crush she had on him wouldn't just go away already—but talking to him about everything would mean that she'd have to explain so much. She had yet to tell him basically anything about her family, and he didn't know the extent to which she wasn't a perfect human replica.

"Once we're done in here."


	23. Light in the Dark

The clawshot was more of an ingenious device than Vanna had thought it would be from the brief description Link had given her of it. It was only when he showed her how it was properly used that she realized it was probably the closest thing Hyrule had to a teleporter that wasn't Ooccoo or Midna. So long as there was something it could grasp onto within a surprisingly long distance, it could get you there in seconds.

However, utilizing it wasn't nearly as mundane an experience as using teleporters was. Since they had only one, the only way for them to travel together was for Vanna to cling to Link for dear life while he used it. It was terrifying to go flying from place to place, but it was incredibly fun at the same time. It was just the right kind of stupid and minimally risky thing she always yearned to do but never would have been allowed to.

At least, that's how she felt about it until they got to a room in the temple where the only way to get to the other side was for Link to clawshot onto targets on sideways gears that were hanging over a seemingly bottomless pit. There were pillars that he could lower them to beneath the targets, so if they fell once they made it to the targets she knew they'd be fine, but falling while zipping over would mean falling into the abyss and more than likely dying. Using the clawshot no longer seemed slightly dangerous and fun—the room looked dangerous and dangerous alone.

"I don't feel good about this..." Vanna said, frowning.

"It's all right. We're not gonna fall."

If it was only one of them going over it, perhaps Vanna would have agreed with him, but the fact that they had to hold on to each other changed everything. Link never seemed to have trouble picking her up, and she remembered Mr. Rider once telling her about how he built his Synthumans to be as light as possible for ease of transportation, yet she still worried that her extra weight would be a burden on Link over the long gap.

"But... Isn't it harder on you to have to hold on to me?" she said.

"Barely. You don't weigh nothin' to me. I wrangle 500-pound goats, remember?" Link said, smiling and flexing an arm.

Vanna sighed and rolled her eyes, but she wasn't able to hold back a little smile at his display. "I know you're strong and all, but I'm still..."

"Scared of heights?"

"I'm not scared of  _heights._  I'm scared of falling into an abyss."

"If you wanna stay back, you can," Link said. "It doesn't look like I'll have to go very far on the map to get the water flowing from this side. It'll only take a few minutes. I can go alone."

The image of Link's dead body in her dream flashed through Vanna's mind again.

She couldn't let him go alone. There was no way of knowing what monsters were hiding back there. Proficient fighter or not, he would be safer if he had backup. She could never live with herself if he had to die in real life all because fear held her back.

"No," she said. "I'm going."

Link wrapped his free arm around Vanna tightly and she clung to him while he used the clawshot to get them over part of the abyss and then down to one of the pillars. From there, he tried to clawshot to another target on another gear, but even on the very edge of the pillar with his arm all the way extended, they were too far away to reach it.

"...So, what now? We're just stuck down here forever?" Vanna said.

She knew that wasn't the case, but it seemed like it had to be. As far as she could see, there were no other targets within a reachable distance to get them off the pillar. Link appeared to be thinking the same thing, looking around the room for another one. Suddenly, his face lit up. Vanna looked in the direction he was looking, but she saw nothing except for taller pillars with vines on them, and a ledge up by them that they couldn't reach.

"Here, hold this," Link said, holding out the clawshot toward her. She grabbed it, and he started taking off his baldric.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Gettin' my sword and shield off my back."

"...Any particular reason why you might be doing that?"

He stuffed his baldric, sword and shield attached, into a pouch, then stood in front of her and looked back. "Give me the clawshot back and hop on."

"What was wrong with me clinging to your side?"

Link pointed to the vines on the pillars. "We can clawshot over to the vines to get to that door up there instead of the one down here, but I'll have to hold onto the vines with one hand and use the clawshot with another, and I'll need to climb them some, too. I can't do those things holding onto you with one arm."

"You're  _sure_  I'm not—?"

"You're  _fine_. Promise. Get on."

Vanna told the whining, wimpy little voice in her head to shut up as she got onto Link's back. With her eyes closed, it actually wasn't too bad. It was a lot easier to pretend that she wasn't hanging onto a guy who was hanging onto vines on a pillar above a bottomless pit when she couldn't see the pit at all.

"You fall asleep back there?" Link said.

It was only then that it hit Vanna that he'd been standing still for a few seconds. When she opened her eyes, they were already up on the high ledge next to the door. She apologized and let go of him, feeling embarrassed. Link looked like he thought it was funny.

They went straight to the next door, that, according to the map, would lead to a room similar to the one that they got water flowing into the main room from. Unlike its matching room on the other side of the temple, the gap in the floor was already half-filled with water when they got to it, and sections of the floor that spiraled up the wall had been broken. At first glance, it appeared that the broken floor would completely impede their only way to get up to the floodgate, but the grates that scattered the walls looked like they would serve as targets to get over the gaps with.

Vanna was going to ask Link if he would prefer her to actually stay back this time, since it seemed pointless for him to go through the trouble of grabbing her every time he needed to use the clawshot when he probably wouldn't need her help anyway, but before she could, he was already wrapping an arm around her and aiming the clawshot at a target across the way. By then, she figured that she might as well go up with him since he apparently didn't really mind holding her, and besides that, she'd get another chance to slide down once the floodgate was open. Getting to go flying from place to place with the clawshot and sliding down the floors were the only enjoyable things about the temple, and she wanted to jump at any chance she could get to do something to shake off the stress that was eating her up.

Upon coming across a Rhinadillo on their way up the incline—the first one Vanna had encountered since her solo foray into the temple—Link realized that he could use the clawshot to snatch its holed armor right off its back, leaving it vulnerable and easy for him to kill.

"Guessin' you don't know what those things are, either," Link said, intending to continue carrying through on the promise he made back in the mines to tell her about the monsters they would come across. "They're called—"

"Rhinadillos," Vanna said.

"Rhinadillos?" he repeated. She smiled at his puzzled expression over the name she'd given them. "That's not what they're called here. They're Helmasaurs. Do you have them in your world? Like the Dodongos, or al-gators, whatever you called 'em?"

" _Alligators_ ," she sounded out. "And, no, not completely. They look kind of like a cross of animals in my world called rhinos and armadillos, so I started calling them Rhinadillos when I saw them in here last time since I didn't know their real names. Maybe you should have let me borrow the monster encyclopedia you apparently have instead of that kid's book about robots."

"It's actually called  _The Great Hyrulean Guide to Monsters_ ," Link said before picking her up again and taking them over a gap. "You could have read it while I was in Kakariko and you were staying in my house."

What followed them opening the floodgate at the top of the room was similar to what had happened with the previous one, only the slide back down was unfortunately much shorter because of the broken floor. With the additional water flowing down the channels to the main room, all they had left to do was find the key to let them into the boss room. Looking at the map, it appeared that the only place they hadn't been yet was a floor below them through the door they hadn't previously been able to reach from the gear room.

The flowing water, much like on the other side of the temple, made the hanging gears start spinning. It was clear that they'd be able to use that to their advantage to get over to the door, but they had to get to a lower section of the room to be able to clawshot to the gears in the first place, which meant going all the way back to the main room and into the gear room from the lower floor again. Hanging from the targets on the gears as they spun them toward the door was even more terrifying for Vanna than hanging onto Link while he climbed the vines, and it was made even worse by how frustratingly slow the gears spun.

Vanna pulled out the map when they got into the room. The lackluster representation of the temple's layout made it appear as though the room would be a normal winding maze, giving no indication at all that majority of the room was actually flooded. There was no way to navigate through it above water.

"...You know what? I think you'll be fine to go on your own here," she said. "I'd probably only be putting you in more danger anyway..."

"Why do you think you'd be putting me in more danger?" Link asked.

"Link. When you stitched up my leg, you could kind of see inside it, right? You saw that my bones are metal, didn't you?" she said. He nodded. "And you know that there have been jellyfish here that generate a lot of electricity..."

A moment passed before he mouthed an 'Oh.' "You're worried that I'll get shocked because of you?"

"Yeah. And..." Vanna crossed her arms, rubbing each one with the opposite hand. "I'm pretty sure it wouldn't kill me, but I'd rather not keep on inhaling freezing water if I don't have to. I swear, it keeps getting colder the more time we spend in here."

Link nodded again and pulled his face mask back up over his cheeks and nose that had long since turned pink from the cold. "I'll try to get back fast as I can so we can get out of here."

He jumped into the water and started swimming down. The farther he swam the less light the glowing pendant he wore could make it above the water, leaving Vanna in the dark. Before it could get pitch black, she reached into her pouch and retrieved both her lantern and her phone. Initially, she only wanted to use her phone for more light, but as soon as it was in her hand, she couldn't stop herself from going back to the messages Daina sent her. She read through them all again, pondering if she should respond while she still had the chance. Multiple times she typed up a response, only to erase it all and stare at the empty box again. There was so much to say, so much that she didn't know  _how_  to say, but right then, there was one thing to say that mattered more than anything else.

_Mr. Rider is going to kill me. You need to stop him._

Almost as soon as she hit send, Vanna saw that Daina had read it. She waited for a response—a promise that Daina would stop him, a push for further clarification,  _anything_ —but she could see that Daina wasn't even typing. The longer she went with no response, the more she regretted saying anything at all. What if Daina was confronting Mr. Rider right at that moment, a universe away where Vanna could do nothing?

She couldn't handle waiting idly for long. Leaving her phone on the ground, she got up and started running in place to try to distract herself and warm herself up. She couldn't stop herself from peeking back over toward her phone every few seconds, and as more time passed, she began to look into the water to see if Link was on his way back yet. Eventually, she started to worry more about Link than Daina. There were a lot of reasons for Daina not to reply quickly, but her dying was more than likely not among them, and death was a frighteningly possible reason that Link was taking so long.

Feeling about as warmed up as she thought she could be with wet clothes and hair, Vanna stopped running and sat down at the edge of the water. After a few more minutes with no sign of Link, she told herself that she would wait for just one more before going after him, and she started to count down the seconds.

Eleven seconds before she would have jumped in, she saw a blue glow appear deep in the water, and her fears started to wash away as it got closer and brighter. However, when Link's arms came into view as he scrambled to get out of the water, Vanna saw that she had been right to worry. The exposed parts of his arms around his elbows were littered with dozens of wounds in crescent formations, and blood was seeping out of each puncture.

"What happened?!" she asked, even though it was quite obvious.

He pulled his facemask down under his chin. "Went the wrong way. Backward. The room with the key..." He reached into his pouch and pulled out a large key that looked more like a mace than anything. "...There were Skullfish in there... And I went in the way I was supposed to leave it first, and couldn't reach it, so I had to go all the way back, and in the room from a different way, and then leave the way I came the first time again. The Skullfish attacked me both times I was in the room with them."

"Link, I'm almost positive you need stitches, and I don't think I can stitch. We need to get out of here now and find someone—"

"It's okay," he said, reaching back into his pouch again. "I managed to get most of the Skullfish off me before they could bite too deep."

"No, it's not! Look at how many cuts you have and how much they're bleeding!"

"It's  _okay_." He brought his arm back around, and he was holding a bottle filled with blue liquid. "I got a potion while I was in Castle Town. One of the strongest kinds out there."

Link pulled the cork out and drank half of the bottle in one go. Vanna pursed her lips, waiting for him to say something. With all the blood covering his arms, she couldn't tell where all the cuts were anymore, so she had no way of knowing whether the potion was actually doing anything or not. Her instincts told her no, that it was impossible for some weird blue drink to heal him, even though she had witnessed something as simple as water healing scratches on Beth's arm. Despite all she'd seen, the line on what she was willing to believe in sat firmly before a drink with the ability to heal dozens of cuts.

He leaned over and dipped his arms into the water, which became clouded with his blood right away; when he pulled his arms back out, there were only red lines where there had been open wounds. She grabbed one of his arms, gently twisting it to see that every last wound had closed.

The line was pushed back a little bit further.

"How does anyone in this world die with medicine like that?!" Vanna said.

"Potions can't heal everything, even the stronger ones. They're good for cuts that don't go too deep, but they can't always cure illnesses or help severe injuries." Link put the bottle away, grabbed the key, and stood up. "Ready to go?"

She considered asking him if he was certain that he'd be able to fight the boss so soon after getting injured, but she felt that he would insist he was fine even if he wasn't. With a sigh, she gathered her things, and they left the room together.

Sooner than she would have liked, they were standing before the final room under the staircase, and Link was unlocking the door. She held her breath as he pushed up the door, expecting to see the boss right there in the small room, but there was nothing in the room at all except for lit sconces on the wall and a hole in the ground. Vanna cautiously walked in ahead of Link and looked down into the hole. Past a certain point, it became so dark that it was impossible to see how much farther down it went. She remembered how the map had large, circular ' _basement_ ' floors, floors that they definitely hadn't been to yet, and she found herself wishing that the boss had merely been trapped in the small room.

Vanna saw Link moving out of the corner of her eye, and when she fully looked over at him, she saw that he was taking off the necklace. Once he had it off, he held it over the hole and then dropped it in. After about ten seconds of falling, a  _plop_  echoed up the hole, and its descent slowed.

"...Ladies first?" Link said.

"Thanks for being such a gentleman, but hell no. We're going at the same time. On three?"

Link nodded and started counting. Vanna had half a mind to not jump on three, and it seemed that Link figured as much, because at the last second he grabbed her hand and pulled her down with him.

Landing in the water was like being slapped over every inch of your body all at once. The water was impossibly cold, like it should have been ice, and Vanna was shivering immediately. She was mindblown at how little the temperature looked to affect Link. Though she knew without a doubt that his face still had to be red under his mask, he dove right on down to grab the necklace, not even gasping or letting out a swear when he landed like she did. She could hardly stand the much less cold water above when she had the wetsuit, but it was clearly working wonders for him.

When she looked down into the water, Link was struggling to get the necklace back over his head because of his helmet and long hat, and he ended up fastening it to his baldric instead. He motioned for her to follow him with his hand before starting to swim down. Knowing how much easier they made things, she put on the iron boots, and she grabbed onto Link to drag him down with her.

As they got closer to the bottom of the chamber, something came into view. A large, see-through tentacle was protruding out of the sand and swaying around. The sight of it was reassuring to Vanna in a way she wasn't expecting. If that thing was Morpheel, then she was reasonably confident that she and Link could defeat it easily. It was just some floppy tentacle, after all.

Some fifteen feet away from the tentacle, she landed on the sand, and it seemed to respond to her presence. It started to sway erratically, and a giant eyeball floated up inside the tentacle and then went back down to disappear under the sand. And then another tentacle came out. And another. And another. And then four more, and then the mouth of the monster erupted out of the sand, opening and exposing its multiple sets of sharp teeth.

She really,  _really_  needed to stop getting her hopes up.

" _Gffmhuhbooengeb_ _e_ _h!_ "

Vanna turned her head to Link, eyebrows drawn together. He repeated the same garbled, muffled mess he'd just said again with more force, but she still couldn't understand him. The third time he repeated it, much slower and with more emphasis on each word, she figured out what he was saying— _give me the boots and get back_. As she slipped out of the boots, she felt impressed that the Zora had been able to understand her so easily before when she'd talked to them while wearing the outfit. Deciding to trust that he would be okay by himself, Vanna left the boots on the ground for him and swam closer to a giant pillar that she could barely make out along the perimeter of the chamber.

From where she was, she couldn't see too much. The chamber was too large and it was just too dark for the glowing pendant to extend its light very far. Most of what she saw in front of her were silhouettes and mere suggestions of what was there, but they were enough for her to make out what was going on.

She could see that she couldn't have been able to help much even if she wanted to. Link had to use the clawshot to seize the eyeball from whichever tentacle it was in, and he had to stab it before the eyeball could escape back into the mouth only to float through the tentacles again. Each time the process repeated, she became less fearful of Morpheel.

It might have had sharp teeth, but besides moving its eyeball around, it didn't really do much—until it finally did, and it did it so fast Vanna couldn't wrap her head around it at first. One of the tentacles swooped down to Link, wrapped around him, and threw him into its mouth. Vanna was left reeling in the darkness, staring at where she knew Morpheel was and expecting to see the glowing pendant bring light back to the chamber as proof that she had misidentified what happened.

After minutes in the darkness, it dawned on her that what she had seen was real. Morpheel put Link in its mouth and he hadn't come back out. He  _wasn't_  coming back out. She had watched Link be eaten alive.

She yelled for Midna, but her voice didn't carry far with all the water in her system. Midna didn't answer her. Vanna attempted to swim back up to the hole they fell in from as fast as she could to get away from Morpheel, with her only guide being the tiny amount of light that was able to make it down to the narrow top of the chamber. When her head surfaced and she had coughed out most of the water, she yelled for Midna again, but all she heard in return was her own voice echoing back to her.

Panicking, Vanna clawed at the walls surrounding her, trying to find some fingerholds. She needed to get out of the water before Morpheel could come up and eat her, too. There was no point in staying and attempting to fight it by herself when she couldn't see it and she didn't have the items she needed to beat it. It was impossible. And, it seemed, it was just as impossible to climb out, because there was absolutely nothing for her to grasp onto.

She struggled pointlessly for another minute after she'd come to the conclusion that there was no way out until she remembered that she had Ooccoo and Ooccoo Jr. in her pouch. As she reached down to pull her pouch off her belt, her hand brushed against something next to her, and she let out a scream. She went back to clawing at the walls to try to get out, only stopping when she heard something surface and felt a hand on her shoulder.

"Where are you trying to go?"

Vanna turned, and right there was Link. It was too dark to see much detail—he apparently didn't have the pendant on him anymore—but from what she could see, he looked as fine as ever.

All the feelings she had felt earlier when she had wrongly assumed Link had died came flooding back to her, only with even more confusion this time. She knew with certainty that she hadn't merely dreamt that he had been eaten, unless  _everything_  had been a dream (the more time she spent in Hyrule, the more she felt like that was a possibility). Whatever the case, she knew what she saw, and what she saw was him being eaten, so how was he right there in front of her?

"You—I thought—you—it  _ate_  you!" she said.

"It only put me in its mouth and then spit me back out. I lost the necklace when I was in it, but everything's fine," Link said. "Are you all right?"

"Uh, no, not really, and I have no idea how you think everything's  _fine_. You lost the necklace, so what are we supposed to do now?"

"I'll go back down and finish fighting it."

"But  _h_ _ow?_ It's pitch black down there!"

Even in the darkness, Vanna could still see how he was just as confused as she was. "What do you mean? It's not  _that_  dark."

She looked down beneath them to confirm that she wasn't going crazy. It was definitely pitch black. "Yes, it is! I can't see anything past here at all!"

"Well, I can, and..." Link looked down, and his eyes widened. "It's coming out of the sand. Stay here!"

With that, he disappeared under the water, leaving her alone again. She squinted her eyes down into the darkness, trying as hard as she could to see something, but she could see nothing at all, not even the vaguest shape of Link's body or of Morpheel. She didn't understand how anyone, much less somebody that couldn't even see clearly far away, would be able to see down there without some sort of night vision goggles. Perhaps it was a Hylian thing.

Though she could see nothing of their fight, Vanna knew that something was happening with Morpheel and Link by how the water waved. After several minutes of waves smashing her against the wall, the water level started to go down abruptly, taking her with it. As her feet landed on the sand with most of the water apparently gone, she heard the familiar exploding sound of a defeated monster, and the chamber filled with blue-green light. The glowing pendant dropped into the sand halfway between where she was and where Link was, and the black shard-like remains of the monster came together to form the final Fused Shadow above it. Vanna noticed it had a similar shape to the headdress, or whatever it was, that Midna always kept on.

Link and Vanna walked toward the Fused Shadow, and she called for Midna on the way to it. Midna slowly rose from her shadow, stretching and rubbing at her eye before gasping.

"There it is!" Midna said. She quickly floated over to it and snatched it up with her hand-hair, and she was smiling when Link and Vanna caught up to her. "Now, don't resent me for all I've put you two through. I  _need_  this thing! We have to do something about Zant, and I can prove his power is false using these! I'm sorry for dragging you two all over the place with me..."

Vanna narrowed her eyes. She didn't believe Midna was sorry at all. "So, are your powers back now because you have all three?" she asked.

Midna huffed and put her hands on her hips. "I know what you're really asking, but Zant's more important right now than you getting your bracelet back."

"But you told me—!"

"I told you I'd get your bracelet back if you'd help me get my powers back," she cut Vanna off. "I never said that the Fused Shadows  _were_  my powers—just that they'd help me get them back. Having all the Fused Shadows isn't all I need."

"So what do you need now?"

"To get rid of Zant, obviously." She flicked her wrist to the ground and a portal appeared. "We should go..."

Link reached down to grab the necklace, and when he stood up, he held it out to Vanna. "You should keep this. Think you need it more than I do."

"Is the ability to see in the dark a Hylian thing?" Vanna asked as she took it from him and clasped it around her neck.

"No, seeing in the dark isn't a Hylian thing. It really wasn't even pitch black, Vanna. Maybe you just have worse vision than you think."

She humphed. It had to be a Hylian thing, and he simply didn't know that it was because he had never known what it was like to  _not_  be able to see in the dark. "Yeah, sure."

Vanna walked onto the portal, ready to finally get out of that cursed temple once and for all, and Link followed after. Like the previous two times Midna had warped them, the feeling of being split apart and coming back together left Vanna's head hurting when they appeared outside of the temple. She had never been inside of the spacious cavern Midna warped them to, but she could tell by looking at it that it housed one of the Spirit's Springs. Down a cliff just in front of them was sparkling clear water, and the stalactites above them featured the same swirling engraved designs that rocks around the other springs had. There was no exit from the cavern the way they were facing, so they turned around at the same time.

Standing right there in front of them was somebody Vanna had never seen before, and even though she didn't know who he was, the sight of him struck fear into her. Before she was able to take in much of his appearance besides the fact that it terrified her, Link's arm shot out in front of her and pushed her back away from the man.

The gesture might have been appreciated if she hadn't been standing right on the ledge.

Vanna fell back into the water, and by the time she surfaced, the water was glowing such a bright white that it hurt to look at. She heard the water moving behind her, and with her eyes squinted, she turned to see what it was. It emerged as she looked back, and for just a second, she locked eyes with an enormous, shining snake—and in that second, she knew without being told that it was a Light Spirit.

It rose up high above her, to the point where she could no longer see its face even with her head tilted back all the way, but she still stared at it in awe. Even with how high it stretched, it seemed that most of its body was still in the depths of the spring.

Suddenly, it lurched backward violently, hitting its head against the wall behind it. Its body faded away until all that was left was the glowing sphere it had held in its mouth, and then that plunged down into the spring. The blinding light of the water faded like the Light Spirit did, and the cavern became bathed in a soft yellow. Small black squares appeared and began to drift up through the air, eerily similar to the black squares that drifted up from the portals Midna created.

" _Zant!_ " Vanna heard Midna yell.

Midna screamed, and when Vanna looked up, there was someone small floating above the spring with both of her arms up as if she was hanging from them. It took Vanna a few seconds to realize that it was Midna; she was only seeing her with clarity unlike she ever had before. Midna wasn't some ill-defined shadowy shape any longer. She had ginger hair slightly lighter than Vanna's with ends that faded into blue, and her body was a mix of black and a nearly-white blue with glowing cyan markings over her limbs and ears. Seeing her as a shadow, Vanna had never thought too much about how odd Midna looked—being a literal shadow was odd enough to make everything else not as weird in comparison—but now it struck her how freakishly off she was proportionately.

Looking up at Midna and thinking of how odd it was to see her not as a shadow, Vanna remembered something Midna had said to her after they got out of the Forest Temple. She had explained that when she was in the twilight, she became her not-shadow self, and that Link was granted protection from the twilight because he was the Chosen Hero, but most importantly, she said that Vanna would turn into a spirit in the twilight and not be able to see either of them. They had to be in the twilight—so why could Vanna see her just fine?

The three Fused Shadows they had collected and the headdress Midna wore, which Vanna could clearly identify as another piece now, shot away from her, and Midna screamed again and struggled to move. A voice Vanna hadn't heard before began to speak, and it took her a moment of hearing him for it to kick in that he wasn't speaking English, or any language Vanna had ever heard before at all. Midna yelled something back in the weird, disjointed language.

With how caught up they became in their conflict, Vanna realized that it was a perfect time for her to get away, and she swam out of the water as quickly as she could. She looked up at the ledge she and Link had been standing on before, and she could see Zant standing there, but Link seemed to be gone. She slowly and stealthily walked up along the incline around the cavern, hoping that she could find Link and sneak out with him without being caught by Zant.

When she got up the incline, she saw that there was something laying where Link had been standing, but it wasn't him. It was a wolf with a strange coat and a manacle around one of his ankles. Link was nowhere to be seen in the cavern. She couldn't see if he was past the dark tunnel that likely led outside, but figuring that he had to be, she slowly backed her way toward it, keeping an eye on Zant.

Before Vanna could manage to get out of the cavern, Midna was sent flying forward and landed on the ground beneath her, and Zant turned to face them. He yelled at Midna more, seemingly not caring that Vanna was standing there, and a glowing red sphere materialized in front of him. The wolf got to his feet and jumped at it, but the sphere exploded and made him fly back toward her like Midna did. He fell to the ground unconscious, with something black and orange sticking out of the center of his head. The object sunk into his head until it was completely inside him, and Midna looked over him with worry. Vanna didn't understand why Midna cared about the wolf until she finally noticed something. There was a dark gray patch on the back of his left paw, a triangle made up of three smaller triangles, just like the birthmark Link had on the back of his left hand.

It all came to her at once. The shape on his paw that was identical to Link's birthmark, the blue earrings he wore that were identical to the ones Link wore, his eyes that were the same shade of blue as Link's, the green hue of the fur on the wolf's back—the wolf  _was_  Link.

"Vanna, don't move," Midna whispered.

Midna was jerked back toward Zant, and Vanna stayed where she was. Zant whispered to Midna for a minute, but she was able to break away from him and come back to Vanna and Link. She was only with them for a moment before Zant yelled at her again, and she was lifted and sent back over above the spring while screaming. Zant turned to the spring and lifted an arm, and with his motion the twilight was dispelled and the Light Spirit emerged once more.

All Vanna could see went white, and all she could hear was Midna screaming.


	24. Desperate Hour

When the light faded, Vanna was out in a field in the heavy rain with Link and Midna, a ways behind a bridge that led to what she assumed was Castle Town. Despite them not appearing to be in the twilight anymore, Link was still a wolf, and Midna was still not a shadow, though she didn't look quite the same as she did in the twilight. Her colors were practically inverted, with the previously light blue parts now being dark blue and the previously black parts of her now being white, and her orange hair had turned white as well. She was laying sprawled out on the ground, eyes half-closed, and panting with every breath.

As Link came to, he looked down at his paws with shock evident on his face. He looked up into Vanna's eyes, and she was filled with almost the same sort of awestruck feeling she had when she locked eyes with the Light Spirit. It was crazy to believe that the wolf was Link, yet entirely impossible to deny while looking into those blue eyes. They were undoubtedly his, wolf or not.

"Link." Saying his name, for some reason or another, made it feel all the more real to her, and it felt even more real when he let out a whine and nodded.

Midna whispered something, but Vanna couldn't make out what she said over the sound of the rain, so she got down and put her ear close to her mouth. "Hurry... To the ... castle... To Zelda..."

"She says we need to take her to Zelda," Vanna said, sitting up and looking at Link.

He nodded again and started toward the bridge, looking back at Vanna as he did. She carefully picked Midna up—though her size made it clear, Vanna was shocked at how little Midna weighed regardless, and that only helped make her seem frailer—and ran behind Link. They were bursting through the double doors to the town in no time.

Luckily, nobody seemed to want to be outside with the weather and what time of night it was, so there was no one to be fearful of a wolf in their town or to be curious about a girl running behind it while holding a strange imp creature. Vanna was following Link faithfully through the streets until she realized that he was taking them in the opposite direction of the castle.

"The castle is that way!" she yelled after him. "Where are you going?!"

He barked several times, and kept running the same way. She wondered if he didn't realize that she couldn't understand him. She continued to follow him regardless, since he was apparently confident in where he was going. They went down street after winding street until they came to a slim alleyway to what looked to be a dead end at first. After going down a small flight of stairs and turning, Vanna saw a door with a sign next to it. It took her a second to decode the sign as  _Telma's Bar_. Link stopped outside the door and sat down, motioning with his head for her to go inside.

She was about to ask Link why he took her to the bar instead of to the castle, but then she remembered how Telma told them back in Kakariko that there was a passageway to the castle from inside the bar.

"But, how am I supposed to find Zelda when I've never stepped foot inside the castle in my life? You need to come with me," Vanna said. Link whined at her, and she groaned. "I don't speak dog!"

He stood up and used his nose to nudge her toward the door.

"Vanna..." Midna whispered. "Just ... go, without him... I'll ... help you find Zelda..."

Vanna frowned and looked down at Link. He nodded again. With a sigh, she positioned Midna so she could safely hold her with one arm, and she opened the door.

The few people inside the bar were either sitting or standing around one table in the back—and one of them, one who wasn't even facing Vanna, made her freeze. He stuck out like a sore thumb, standing at least a full head over everyone else, wearing clothes like no one else wore, dark hair uniquely spiked. She couldn't see his face, but she didn't need to.

For just a second, she was filled with the instinctual urge to run to him and hug him and tell him all about everything that had happened like she would have done prior to coming to Hyrule.

And then it hit her that things weren't like they used to be anymore, and she nearly slammed the door and ran back around the corner, her heart pounding heavily.

Four more days. She was supposed to have four more days before having to worry about him.

Link rounded the corner, making a noise that sounded like the wolf equivalent of ' _Huh?_ ' and looking up at her curiously.

"Zi is in there," Vanna whispered, as if Zi could somehow hear her from where she was. "Link, I can't—we need to find some other way into the castle!"

Link turned his head, and then walked back around the corner. Vanna poked her head out just enough to see what he was doing. A fluffy white cat jumped from a window on the second floor and down some crates that were stacked up against the wall. It meowed at Link repeatedly as it got down to the ground. When it was finishing meowing, Link made noises at it. The cat looked over at Vanna, and she brought her head back around.

"I think Link is figuring something out," she whispered to Midna. "We'll get you to Zelda, okay?"

Midna made the slightest movement to nod her head. She looked like she was getting worse by the second; her skin was becoming whiter and she was having trouble keeping her eyes open. Vanna felt racked with guilt for being unable to bring her inside the bar. As much as she had hated Midna for what she put her through, Midna's actions had inadvertently saved her life, and Vanna found herself scared at the idea of not being able to save hers.

After making noises at each other for a minute, Link and the cat came over to stand in front of her. The cat jumped up on Link's back and laid down on him for a few seconds before it jumped off, and they both looked up at her expectantly. She stared at them blankly, unsure what they wanted her to make of their display. Link stretched up to tap Midna with his nose.

"You... You want me to lay Midna down on your back?" she said.

Link nodded. Vanna cautiously laid Midna on her stomach on his back, and when she let go, Midna's little hands grabbed fistfuls of his fur like they were her lifeline. With Midna on his back, Link and the cat walked back toward the bar, and Vanna trailed behind them. Link jumped up the crates that led to the window, and Vanna was starting to climb up after him when he stopped and shook his head at her.

"You don't want me to go with you?" she asked. He shook his head. "Is that no, as in  _no, you don't want me to go with you_ , or  _no, you_ do _want me to go with you?_  Er—just nod if I should follow you and shake your head if I shouldn't."

He shook his head again.

"Okay," she said slowly. "Where should I go while you're gone?"

Link barked toward the cat, and it purred back. The cat walked to the bottom of the stairs and turned to look at Vanna while wagging its tail toward itself.

"Is it asking me to follow it?" she asked Link, and she received another nod in return.

Vanna heard the creak of a door opening, and Link quickly jumped through the window at the sound. She tried to hide behind the crates out of fear that it might have been Zi coming out of the bar, but the person who opened the door saw her before she could hide. The moment she saw that it wasn't Zi, she felt relieved, but that relief was quickly taken over by confusion as she realized that she recognized the person's face. It was a face she had never expected to see in Hyrule at all; Bax, one of her few close friends from home.

But as soon as she recognized him, she recognized, too, that almost everything about him was slightly off. His hair was straighter, eyes more blue, face more chiseled and mature, donned in an outfit she knew Bax would never touch even in an alternate world with a questionable fashion sense, and to top it off, his ears were elongated and ended in a point. Looking at him felt like looking at badly-made realistic robots—he was  _so_  close to being a perfect replica of Bax, but there was just enough wrong with his appearance to put her on edge.

"What are you doing out here in this pouring rain? Why don't you come inside the bar?" he asked her. His voice was even more wrong than his face, with a completely different timbre and an English accent.

"I can't—" Vanna stopped abruptly, not knowing what to say.

"Well, you can't stay out here in the rain, can you? You don't want to catch a cold."

She stood there with her mouth slightly ajar, trying to think of how she could explain to him that there was somebody inside the bar that wanted to kidnap her and hand her off to his dad to kill her without sounding like a complete lunatic.

"You need to come inside, too, Louise!" he said. He walked out and grabbed the cat, giving her a gentle scolding for getting outside, and on the way back he placed a hand on Vanna's shoulder. "Come on, let's hurry and get you inside to dry off."

"There's a guy in there that I'm scared to see," she suddenly blurted out.

"Who? The tall fellow? He does look a bit strange, but I promise you have no reason to be scared. Should he try to hurt anyone in the bar, trust me, Telma will have him pay for it dearly."

Vanna hesitantly nodded, and they started toward the door together. Part of her wanted to turn and run out of the town, but more of her agreed with the man. Zi wouldn't stay in the bar forever. It probably would be safer to be with Zi and several other people than it would be for her to run into him while she was roaming the empty streets of the town. As long as other people were around, they could stop him from trying anything.

As the door shut behind them, Zi looked at them. His eyes lit up and he smiled at her, and she wished for nothing more than to be able to smile back at him. He turned and started walking toward her. When she noticed that he was wearing one NEVA on each of his wrists, she reached back and grabbed the doorknob, ready to book it out of there.

Zi came to a stop, and his smile fell. He took off both NEVAs and threw them on the nearest table, and started again on his way toward her, arms open.

"...You two know each other?" the Bax lookalike said, eyes darting back and forth from Vanna to Zi.

"She's the girl I was talking about," Zi said, coming to a stop in front of them.

"Oh. I... I suppose I'll let you two have your reunion alone, then. I'll go fetch you a towel from the back, if you'll excuse me."

He walked away with his head down, leaving Vanna and Zi alone. She looked up at him nervously, wondering if she should have run when she had the chance instead of relying on strangers to keep her safe.

"Hug," Zi said.

She didn't respond.

He sighed. "Vanna, I don't even have the NEVAs on me right now. I just want to talk to you. And also get a hug, 'cause I haven't had one in three weeks."

She bit on the inside of her bottom lip, contemplating giving in to temptation. Zi pouted, and tucked his head down and tried to give her puppy dog eyes. He knew what he was doing; he knew that she could never resist him when he did that.

She hugged him tightly, and sighed as he returned the gesture. For the first time since she'd left for Lakebed Temple with Link, she was warm, and comfortable, even with that nagging thought at the back of her head warning her to be cautious of letting her guard down too much.

"How long have you been standing out in the rain? You're soaking wet and  _freezing_ , Van."

"I'm well aware," she mumbled into his chest.

They stayed in their embrace until she heard footsteps come up to them. Vanna opened her eyes and saw Bax's doppelganger standing next to them awkwardly, two dark red towels in his hands. She let go of Zi then, leaving his clothes wet where she had been pressed against him, and she grabbed a towel from the man.

"I'm leaving for my home now. If you need anything, don't hesitate to ask Telma. She's got more towels, or more of whatever you might need here, since her friends are 'round so often. You'll need money for food or drinks, however." He glanced up at Zi for just a second, then looked back at her. "...Don't be afraid to ask for help."

"Before you go—I didn't get your name," she said.

"Shad."

Vanna repeated it back to him, and he gave a wary smile before leaving with the other towel held above his head to protect him from the rain.

"...He seems to have mispronounced  _Bax_ ," Zi said. She felt vindicated knowing that she wasn't alone in seeing the eerie resemblance. "Seriously. That guy looks like an avatar Bax would make based on himself in a shitty RPG."

She couldn't help the small laugh that came out from his apt comparison. Zi smiled at her, but she noticed there was a hint of sadness in it, as if her laughter was a bittersweet thing.

Considering what he was going to do, she supposed it was. If he had his way, it would be the final time he would ever hear her laugh.

His smile fell again when hers did. "We should sit down and talk," he said, the playfulness in his voice gone.

Vanna thought about running away again, but he grabbed her hand and walked her toward the table farthest away from everyone else in the bar. It was the smallest one available, with only two seats on opposite sides. She looked over to Telma as she sat down, and Telma smiled and waved. Vanna gave a short wave back, and then wrapped the towel around her shoulders.

Zi turned to see who she waved at, then turned back to her. "You've met her already?"

She nodded. "Guess you have, too?"

"Just did for the first time earlier."

She pondered whether or not she should say what she wanted to say from the second she first saw him in the bar. She wasn't able to hold herself back for long. "Why are you here? I was supposed to have until the 24th. Today's the 20th."

"Think it's technically the 21st now," he said. She rolled her eyes. "Dad finished making the NEVAs earlier than he thought he would. I got here on the 19th. Since I did some research on the game, I knew you'd come to the bar sooner or later."

"Wait..." Vanna stopped, thinking through the question that popped up in her head and looking for an answer. When she couldn't find one, she asked Zi, "Why did you come on the 19th?"

"Uh, what? I told you, my dad finished earl—"

"No, I mean—why didn't you time travel back to September 1st, the first day I got here, instead of waiting around for me to run into you?"

"I tried, but I couldn't. My dad and I have this ... hypothesis, that Hyrule and our world are kind of running parallel to each other, and NEVA can't breach that. I did some more testing with NEVA before coming to find you, and it worked fine taking me to different times and places in our world. But once you try to come here, it's like it locks up and makes you go to the time that matches up with our world. It was September 1st in our world when you left, and it took you to September 1st here, and when I left on September 19th, it took me to September 19th here, too."

That certainly explained a lot. She still had questions, though, despite her gratefulness for the answer she'd already been given. "Why didn't you travel back to September 1st in our world, and then come here?"

"Because then I would have crossed my own timeline, and there's too much potential for things to go wrong with doing that. The universe might not be able to handle two of me at any one given time."

"I don't blame it," Vanna said. "I couldn't."

He laughed, and it was her turn to give him a bittersweet smile. She'd missed being able to joke around with him.

"...Okay, so, why didn't you just travel back to September 1st after you got here on the 19th?" she asked.

"Still timelines. You already told me that I didn't show up then." He paused. "Kinda sounds like you wish I would have... You know. Brought you home earlier."

Her jaw clenched. "No. I was just curious why you didn't, since you're apparently so set on doing it."

He pursed his lips and averted his eyes. She looked away too, and she reached up and grabbed the pendant hanging against her chest, savoring the feeling of water swirling inside it like it was a stress reliever. It was still glowing faintly in the dimly-lit bar.

"...That's from the Zora Armor, right?" Zi said.

She nodded, but she still didn't make eye contact with him.

"...Where's Link?" he asked.

She shrugged. "How's school been?"

"It's ... all right. Same old."

He sounded bored, like this wasn't what he wanted to be talking about. She couldn't blame him; after all, she didn't want to talk about the things that he wanted to talk about. Then again, what she wanted to talk about didn't involve a plan that would end with someone's murder.

"Has anyone noticed that I've been gone aside from Bax, Maddie, and Nessa?" she asked. Her friends had texted her a few times early on, but aside from telling them not to worry about her, she hadn't spoken to them. She'd been unsure of what to tell them, knowing Mr. Rider wouldn't want her talking about NEVA to people who weren't in on its existence.

"You're the best friend of the most popular boy in school and you haven't been with me lately. Of course people noticed you've been gone. I've been telling them you're with your grandparents in Ireland."

"I'm your best friend, but you want to hand me off to your dad for him to kill me," she said under her breath.

He frowned. "Vanna, I don't  _want_  to."

"Then don't," she whispered. "Please, please,  _don't_."

"I have to."

" _Why?!_ " she yelled.

The voices in the back of the bar went silent, and she saw people there look at her out of her peripheral, but she couldn't bring herself to look at them directly. She shrunk down into her seat.

Zi sighed again, and he spoke to her softly. "Vanna, this is going to happen no matter what I do. If I don't bring you home, my dad will get someone else to find you—and that person's not going to be  _nearly_  as nice to you as I am. And my dad will be absolutely  _furious_  with me. All my life he's promised me that I'm going to inherit Ridertech when he retires, that I'll inherit all his fortune when he dies, but he threatened to take all of that away from me and kick me out on my ass if I didn't help him find you. And I knew that he wouldn't have let me see you one last time if I hadn't helped him... So I figured I may as well get to spend a little while longer with you and not have my life plans ruined."

"What about  _my_  life plans?" she said, squeezing the pendant so hard that she wouldn't have been surprised if she broke it.

"What plans? The plans that were doomed from the start?"

She was going to yell at him again, but she stopped herself before she started.

He was right. Her plans had been doomed from the start. She never truly had a chance at anything. The truth didn't just destroy everything she knew about who she was—it destroyed everything she wanted long before she even knew that it did.

Vanna crossed her arms and looked away from him, tears clouding her eyes. "You're still not taking me back," she said through her teeth.

"Would you prefer to be tracked down and brought to my dad by someone you don't know?" he said.

"Wouldn't hurt as much to be betrayed by someone I don't care about," she said quietly. She squeezed her eyes shut after she felt a tear roll down her cheek.

"Vanna..."

She shook her head and turned in her seat so that she was facing the wall, and she buried her head in her hands. She expected it, but she couldn't believe that he really was going to side with his dad over her.

Something rubbed against her legs, and she cracked her eyes open to see that it was the cat. Louise looked up at her before walking over to a door she hadn't paid mind to before. Zi noticed her staring behind him, so he looked back at what it was.

"...That's just a bathroom," he said. "More like an indoor-outhouse. It's gross."

"I'm going," she said, standing up and wiping at her eyes.

Zi didn't say anything about her leaving the table. She didn't need to use the bathroom, but Louise looked like she wanted her to follow her inside, so she did. Vanna realized before she even closed the door behind them why Louise wanted to her to go to the bathroom with her.

Shad had prevented her from leading Vanna wherever Link told her to by bringing them inside, but the bathroom had a small window. Louise wanted to escape.

Vanna didn't know if it was a good idea. Zi would find out eventually that she was no longer in the bathroom, and then he would come after her.

But Link had been the one to give directions to Louise about taking her away from the bar. He wouldn't have told the cat to take her somewhere she wasn't safe.

With some difficulty due to its high position on the wall, she opened the window, and then Louise jumped through it. Vanna stood on the toilet and put her arms through the opening, and with more difficulty than opening it, she managed to hoist herself up and out the window. She fell gracelessly to the cobblestone street outside and groaned in pain.

Louise was running before Vanna was fully to her feet, and she grabbed the towel that had fallen off her before she ran after her. She took her down street after street as Link had done earlier, and Vanna realized after a few minutes of running that Louise seemed to be taking her back the way that she and Link had come. It turned out that her observation was right; Louise led her outside the same double doors they came in through, and she came to a stop.

"This is where he wanted you to take me?" she asked.

Louise merely blinked up at her.

"...You can speak wolf, but you can't speak human?"

She made no sign that she understood what Vanna said, so she took that as a yes.

Vanna sighed and sat down. She supposed it was far enough away from Zi; there were so many roads in Castle Town, and surely this couldn't have been the only way to leave it. If he wanted to search for her, it would probably take him a while to come the way they had gone, and she could also jump into the moat and hide under the bridge if she needed to. A body of water would be the absolute last place Zi would think to look for her.

Louise jumped on her and curled up in her lap, and Vanna laid the towel down over her body. Though it was starting to slow, rain was still coming down, and she didn't think the cat would have liked to get any more wet than she already was.

She had been absentmindedly petting the soft fur on Louise's head for what felt like half an hour when she heard something coming toward her. She panicked and hurried to get to her feet, scaring Louise, before the sound or where it was coming from registered within her. After she stood, she realized that the footsteps were coming from the bridge, not from inside the town, and that they were very clearly not human footsteps. Vanna looked to the bridge, and Link was there, still as a wolf, walking toward her with Midna on his back. She still hadn't reverted to a shadow, but her color had come back to her. She looked healthy. Vanna had never felt so relieved upon seeing her.

"What happened?" Vanna asked as they approached.

"Princess Zelda ...  _saved_  me," Midna said, pronouncing ' _saved_ ' like there was some other meaning behind it. "And she told us what to do to break the curse Zant put on Link. We have to head for the Sacred Grove deep in Faron Woods to find the Master Sword."

Vanna remembered hearing of the Master Sword back in America, so she knew it had to be important here, though she wondered how it could have been helpful now of all times. "Link can't exactly use a sword right now though, can he?"

"No, but the Master Sword can never be touched by evil. It's the only thing that will banish the curse from him."

Link nodded along to what she said, or at least that's what Vanna had thought he was doing at first. It wasn't until she looked at his face that she realized his head was bobbing up and down because he was beginning to doze off every few seconds and then waking himself up.

"Link needs to sleep before doing anything. He can barely keep his head up," she said. He blinked his eyes wide open at her words.

"Since he's a wolf, and ... the twilight doesn't affect you, I can actually warp us down to Ordon through a twilight portal, and he can sleep in his house," Midna said.

"The twilight really wasn't affecting me at all?" Vanna asked. "I thought... I thought you were wrong before, that it was possible for me to be a spirit and still see you and Link in the twilight."

"I wasn't wrong. You weren't a spirit back there."

Vanna's brows furrowed. "Why not?" she asked, even though she thought she knew the answer.

"Whatever the reason... It's a good thing, isn't it? You can warp through the twilight. That's easier than you having to walk or ride a horse everywhere."

"I guess," she said, her voice barely above a whisper. ' _I guess, if I value convenience over having a spirit._ '

She didn't know why the thought upset her so much. It wasn't like she had ever believed in that religious mumbo-jumbo in the first place. If she'd been asked a month ago if she thought she had a spirit, she would have laughed and said no—so why did the confirmation of what she had always believed hurt?

"Can we go?" Vanna asked. "Zi is probably looking for me in the town. I don't want to linger around here any longer."

With a snap of Midna's fingers, they were gone.


	25. Sacred Grove

The night seemed to drag on and on.

Midna had warped them to Ordona, used her hand-hair to lift Link up to his door because he couldn't climb the ladder as a wolf, and he fell asleep on his floor almost as soon as he was inside. Midna retreated into his shadow to sleep as well, leaving Vanna the only one awake. She couldn't sleep, not knowing that Zi was out there somewhere.

She tried to keep her mind off of everything that had happened, at first by changing out of her damp clothes and putting her hair into a ratty, tangled excuse of a braid, and then by finding and going through that monster encyclopedia Link had mentioned. Every now and then, she couldn't stop herself from looking over at Link, all curled up and sleeping peacefully. It was adorable how sometimes his face scrunched up or an ear twitched or he did that silly thing where he moved his legs like he was running just like her dog often did while he was sleeping...

She sighed as she remembered that she would never see her dog again, and went back to reading.

The blue glow of the Zora's pendant kept Link's house sufficiently lit throughout the night, and she knew morning was finally arriving when the light in the house began to fade from blue to pink. When the pendant no longer gave any light with the sun supplying all that was needed, Midna appeared out of Link's shadow, sitting next to him and stretching while she yawned.

Her orange hair was tousled and down for once, falling over her shoulders with their blue ends curling up on the floor. Vanna was still struck by how bizarre she looked—her hairline was jagged, her spindly arms were about twice as long as they should have been, her legs were shorter than her forearms, her nose was smaller than the tip of a pinky, her head was probably twice as wide as an average one was, and her eyes were the size of lemons and had yellow scleras and orange and red irises—but there was something charming about Midna's strangeness that she hadn't seen the night before.

Somehow it already seemed like days had passed since then, though Vanna was sure it hadn't even been twelve hours since they left Lakebed Temple. It seemed like so much had happened at once, leaving her with so much to take in; the Fused Shadows were gone so her chance at getting NEVA back was gone, Link was cursed and turned into a wolf, Zi was in Hyrule and searching for her already, it was all but confirmed that she didn't have a spirit, and Midna was ... different.

"Good morning," Midna said as she saw her sitting at the table. Vanna noticed for the first time that her voice sounded clearer; back when she was a shadow, it always had a slight echo to it.

"Morning," Vanna said. "...So, what do we do now?"

Midna sighed and looked at Link. "We have to get the Master Sword before we can do anything. And then... It's my plan B. We have to try to find something else."

"What else is there? More Fused Shadows?"

"No. There were only those four, and they're long gone. I'll explain when Link is human again. It's a long shot, but ... it's all I've got left."

* * *

After Link had finally woken up, they went outside. Vanna stopped in front of Link's door ahead of him, shocked. Epona was standing in front of his house. She felt guilty for them leaving her near the cave at Lake Hylia, but she was relieved (and extremely impressed) that Epona had found her way back home.

When Link noticed her, he jumped right off his porch and ran up to her, yapping away at her and wagging his fluffy tail. The sight instantly had Vanna in a better mood. She didn't think she had ever seen Link happier than he was while getting to have a conversation with his horse as a wolf. When he realized that Vanna was standing up by the door watching him, he visibly tried to calm himself, but she could still hear the excitement in his voice as he barked out to Epona. Epona nickered at him before walking down the path to the main part of Ordon Village.

"So, do you know where the Sacred Grove is?" Vanna asked him after she had climbed down the ladder. He shook his head. "Did Zelda give any instructions on how to get there or did she only say that it was in Faron Woods?"

"All she said was that it was in Faron Woods," Midna answered. "We'll just have to go there and search around until we find it."

Link barked at something behind Vanna. She turned her head, expecting to see a monster, but all she saw was a squirrel. A high-pitched chirp came from the squirrel, and Link made noises back at it. After the squirrel responded with more chirps, Link lurched off down the path to Faron, making Midna almost fall off his back. Vanna ran after him, but he was too fast for her to catch up. When she made it to the bridge, he was disappearing around a bend in the path. She wanted to yell for him to wait up, but she thought that whatever he was running off to had to be something urgent that the squirrel had told him about.

She rounded one final corner into the clearing that housed the Forest Temple, and she picked up her pace when she saw the reason why Link had run off. Up closer to the giant tree were monsters that she had never seen before, not even among the countless entries of the monster encyclopedia. They were wooden creatures that moved like marionettes hanging from invisible strings, and they were attacking a monkey.

For a brief moment, Vanna became aware of how ludicrous all of this was. This guy she'd been spending time with over the past few weeks got turned into an oversized dog, he had a conversation with his horse and a squirrel, and now he was attacking monster marionettes to save a monkey. She wondered if her life would ever go back to making sense.

By the time she made it to them, Link was already lunging at the last marionette and shredding it to pieces with his teeth. Its broken remains fell to the ground piece by piece and poofed away until none of it was left.

The monkey—it was Rose from before—stood from her cowering position and warily checked to ensure all the monsters were gone. Vanna was surprised that the monkey didn't seem frightened by Link at all after seeing him viciously attack the monsters, despite the fact that he had attacked them to save her. Rose seemed giddy to see him, almost like how Link had been with Epona. She led them over to the gorge and motioned toward an opening in the cliff face that surrounded the clearing while squeaking something at Link.

"Does she want us to go check out that tunnel?" Midna asked. Link nodded. "All right, let's go!"

"And how exactly are we supposed to get down there?" Vanna said.

"The same way Link got up to his house last night. Thanks to me not being stuck as a shadow in this world anymore..."

Midna floated off his back and down to the tunnel. Her hair outstretched into the shape of an arm and reached all the way over to snatch up Link, and she quickly pulled him over to her. Vanna's turn was next. Before she could even yell, she was dropped from Midna's hair-hand and tumbled forward to the ground in the tunnel.

"Could've been a  _little_  more gentle," she grumbled as she stood up.

Midna settled down on Link's back again. "Could've, I guess. But Link didn't complain..."

"Yeah, because he's a wolf!"

Midna laughed loudly, the sound echoing down the small tunnel. Link huffed through his nose, making Vanna join Midna in laughter. He couldn't properly show emotion through his wolf face, but the corners of his mouth pulling up a touch was enough to let her guess that he thought it was kind of funny, too.

Link led the way out of the tunnel and into another part of the forest that was more abyss than ground. When Midna floated over to a section of the ground with a devilish smile on her face, Vanna knew she wasn't going to like what was coming.

At the very least, it was over quick, and they were close to another small tunnel in no time. Vanna had started to walk to it, but she stopped when she saw Link sit down in front of a stone with a design carved into it and a perfect circle cut right through the middle. Upon noticing that he seemed to be listening intently to something, she began to listen, too, and she realized that there was a faint whistling melody coming from the stone. After a few repetitions of the short melody, Link leaned his head back, closed his eyes, and began to howl along with it.

'...What is he doing?' she mouthed at Midna.

Midna shrugged exaggeratedly in response.

After the song was done, Link stayed in the same position for a good thirty seconds before he looked to come back to his senses. He shook his head and stood up, and then carried on into the tunnel as if he hadn't just done something really weird. Vanna followed him inside, looking forward to him getting the Master Sword and becoming a human again so she could ask him what that was all about.

Stepping out of that tunnel and into the forest felt like stepping into another world. Vanna had been wrong before when she thought that the alcove in Kakariko's graveyard or the Spirit's Springs were the most scenic locations to exist.  _This_  was. The way the light shone down through the foliage, the misty glow—it seemed like it had been ripped from a painting, a masterpiece too beautiful to exist in real life. She didn't think there could be any place more fitting of being called the Sacred Grove.

While she was taking in the scenery, she noticed another moss-covered stone much like the one Link had howled at on the other side of the tunnel. The wind whistling through the triangle-shaped hole in the middle played a different melody, and the design carved into its surface was a design she'd come across several times since coming to Hyrule. It was the same as Link's birthmark, the mark on the metal shield from his basement, and even the mark on the metal shield at Malo Mart. She had once been fine thinking it could be a coincidence to see it on multiple things, but the appearance of that stone pushed it out of coincidence territory. She decided to ask Link if he knew about the significance of that shape as well when he would become human again.

When Link noticed the stone, he sat in front of it and howled along to its melody. She expected him to freeze in place afterward as he had done with the previous stone, but instead, Link stood up when the song finished. Out of the corner of her eye, Vanna saw a blue light appear at the top of one of the massive trees.

She looked over to see a small creature falling from the tree. His feet landed gently on the ground, despite the height he fell from, and he giggled and waved at them. He looked somewhat similar to the marionettes, but he was smaller and moved like a normal person, and he held a glowing blue lantern in one hand and a weird horn in the other.

He took in a deep breath before raising the horn to his mouth and blowing out one long note, sending leaves flying out from each bell of the instrument. Two marionettes dropped down on each side of him, and they started to slowly float forward with their sights set on Link. The creature giggled before running off and going through another tunnel that faded into view.

Link launched himself toward the marionettes, and landed on one and ripped it to pieces with his teeth. He moved so fast from one to the other that it was hard to keep track of where he was, leaving Vanna surprised when she realized he was already on the final one. He barked back at her when that one was down, then ran toward the tunnel the little creature had gone through. She ran after him, but like before, she was unable to catch up to him.

She emerged through the other side of the tunnel, in another little sectioned off area with multiple tunnels to leave through, and Link was nowhere to be seen. The tunnel nearest to her was the first one she ran to, but after seeing that the forest beyond it was empty and only led to even more tunnels, she turned back around and went through the other one. Link wasn't in that area, either—he had to have already gone through another tunnel, though it could have been any of the ones she'd seen in either place.

Her hand itched toward her arm, longing to use the TPort that wasn't there to get her out. She groaned and plopped down to the ground, grasping at the roots of her hair in frustration. Link would come back to look for her, so staying put was likely a better idea than going through tunnel after tunnel and potentially only leading herself farther away from him.

Eventually, she relaxed against a tree and closed her eyes, hoping to get some sleep. The woods seemed like the perfect place to rest—not only was the scenery calming, but Zi probably couldn't get there, so the only potential danger came in the form of the marionettes that cared more about Link than her...

Or so she thought until she felt something rough slap her in the face. She had known it was one of the marionettes before she even opened her eyes, yet she was still startled when she did. Three of them were in front of her, and their faces were far creepier up close. As she rushed to get to her feet and get her sword out, they kept on swinging at her, but it was more to their detriment than hers; while getting slapped wasn't exactly pleasant for her, every hit would break off bits of their hands.

Several splinters and little tears in her clothes later, the marionettes were dead, and she changed her mind about waiting around for Link. The forest couldn't have been  _that_  big. She was bound to run into him sooner or later.

She ended up running in circles, and sporadically fighting off more marionettes that appeared. Everything blended together, and it became impossible to tell where she had come from and where she had been already. Once, she found herself back where they first entered the woods, though she could only tell it was the same place by the stone with the triangle-shaped hole. An idea came to her when she saw it: if there was something distinct she could recognize in each part of the forest, it would help her to not get lost.

After a while of pondering how exactly to do that, she decided on carving small numbers into the walls toward the end of each tunnel she left. They were discreet enough so as not to disturb the beauty of the forest, but visible enough for her to see if she had been somewhere already.

Vanna did what she was certain were several runs throughout every single part of the woods after she had numbered each and every tunnel she'd found, and still, there was no Link. Perhaps if she'd gone through each section once and not run into him, she could have easily brushed it off as them just being in different places at the same time, but she became more worried with each pass through the woods where she didn't see him. She was stopped at the end of one of the tunnels, contemplating sitting back down and waiting for him again, when she heard something faint in the distance. It wasn't the sound of wolf paws against the ground like she wanted to hear, but it was something she hoped could lead her to Link; it was the sound of the little wooden creature playing a song on his horn.

She followed the sound and found him sitting up on a high branch of a tree. He didn't notice her. Sitting up there, swinging his legs and playing his goofy horn, he looked so innocent, yet Vanna couldn't help but wonder if he had done something to Link.

As if just to prove her wrong, she heard soft footsteps approach her from behind, and when she turned, there he was. She sighed in relief.

" _There_  you are," Midna said. "Link's been sniffing around for you."

"Don't run off so fast next time," Vanna said to Link. "I was starting to worry that something bad happened to you..."

"The only bad thing that's happened is that  _that_  little guy up there won't stop running and hiding from us. I think he's trying to lead us somewhere, but he's doing it in the most  _annoying_  way possible."

Vanna looked up at the little creature. He was still playing his horn, apparently without a care that they were some twenty feet below him discussing him.

Black streaked up through the air, and suddenly Midna was behind the creature. With a swift kick of her tiny leg, he fell off the branch. Though he hit the ground hard, he was giggling as he got to his feet. The stone wall built into raised earth behind him disappeared, and he ran through the passageway behind it. Since he didn't call for more marionettes this time, it was easy for them to take off right after him and stay on his tail.

He led them through several passageways, only to come to a stop at a stone structure. He turned around, and with one final giggle, shot up into the sky and out of sight as a wall on the structure disappeared. Even before Link and Vanna went through the newly-present archway, she could see through it that the building was missing its roof. The state of decay it was in became more apparent with each step inside. Entire slabs of walls were gone, the bottom half of a staircase was nothing more than rubble, and the very floor was almost entirely covered in leaves and moss.

Only three things in the dilapidated building were in okay condition; one was a shiny plaque on the ground that featured the three-triangles-in-one motif, and the other two were identical towering statues. The statues, like everything else, had grown moss in places, and they looked rusted in some spots, but at least they were both whole.

While Link went to the plaque and howled the melody from the last stone, Vanna went to the door behind the statues. The door, too, had the triangles engraved in it, though it also featured a stylized bird beneath them like the shield at Malo Mart did. She tried to push the door up into the wall like she suspected was necessary from the lack of a handle, but it didn't budge. It didn't budge from being pushed left or right or down, either.

After Link's howling came to an end, she heard two loud thumps behind her. She turned around and gasped when she saw that the statues had changed positions and appearances. The engraved lines along their bodies were glowing blue, and one of the statues had moved between Vanna and Link while the other had moved behind him. Midna shot up off Link's back and came over to float beside Vanna, to her slight aggravation. Not that Vanna minded Midna being next to her, but it bothered her that Midna was leaving Link to fend for himself as a wolf between two giant living statues who were wielding giant war hammers that looked like they could flatten someone in an instant.

Link, from where Vanna could see him between the statue's legs, though, didn't look to mind Midna leaving him, nor did he look frightened by the statues. That would have placated her were it not for Link's tendency to bite off a bigger piece than he could chew. What did finally quell her worries that the statues were hostile left her confused instead—Link and one of the statues turned to the right while the other one turned left, Link hopped forward, and then the statues each hopped forward.

"What...?"

"Link heard something we didn't," Midna answered her unfinished question.

"That's obvious," Vanna said. Link turned and hopped again, and again the statues followed his lead, with one going in the opposite direction. "But that doesn't exactly explain why they're doing ...  _that_."

"At least we're getting close to the Master Sword, so he'll be human again soon and he can tell you. It's a shame, though. I'll miss him being a wolf."

"Why? Because he can't backtalk to you?"

"Well, yeah, there's that, but he was a wolf when we met, and I've spent a lot of time with him as a wolf. I'm still not entirely used to his human form."

Vanna looked over at her, more confused by her response than she was by Link and the statues. "What do you mean? He was just cursed into becoming a wolf last night."

"Remember how I told you that the only reason Link doesn't turn into a spirit in the twilight is that he's the Chosen Hero?"

"Yeah?"

"Because he's the Chosen Hero, he turns into a wolf in the twilight instead. Last night, Zant didn't curse Link into becoming a wolf—he cursed Link into  _staying_  a wolf, even in the light," Midna said.

Vanna looked back to Link then, still hopping around with the statues. It was strange to think that he had turned into the wolf he was now every time he'd left to clear the twilight, though him having previous experience being a wolf accounted for him being good at walking around on four legs and fighting with his teeth.

Link and the statues continued to jump from place to place for several minutes and stopped when the statues were back in the same position they had been in when they first entered the ruins. The door rumbled behind Vanna as it opened on its own, and the statues stopped glowing. Midna floated over to Link and situated herself on his back again before he started on his way to the door. Vanna got a slight head start going through the doorway and up the flight of stairs beyond it, and she slowed as she reached the top.

The foggy room at the top of the stairs, if it could still be called a room, had been overtaken by nature more so than the room at the bottom; the ' _walls_ ' were more comprised of greenery and broken pillars than actual wall, and there was no ceiling either, allowing beams of light to shine down through the surrounding trees. More important than all of that, however, was the sword in the middle of the room.

As soon as Link got to the top of the stairs and noticed the sword, he ran for it. It started to glow white, becoming more intense the nearer Link got to it. When he was mere inches away, there was a sudden pulse of bright light that sent Midna flying off his back. Light radiated from Link's body, filling the entire room with more and more light until there was nothing but whiteness.

In a flash, the light dissipated. In the place where he had been as a wolf stood a human Link, donned in his signature green. Link reached forward and wrapped both hands around the hilt of the Master Sword, and with a tug, pulled it out of the pedestal. He raised it skyward, and the fog cleared from the room in waves.

"The sword accepted you as its master..." Midna said.

Vanna walked farther into the room as Link took a few experimental swings with the sword. She didn't notice until she was next to her that Midna had something in her hand. It looked like the black and orange object that Zant had embedded into Link's head.

"What is that thing?" Vanna asked.

"It's the embodiment of the evil magic that Zant cast on Link," Midna answered. "It's definitely different from our tribe's shadow magic..."

At his name, Link turned toward them, though his eyes went right back to the sword he still held out in front of him. He was admiring it like it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his entire life.

"Should we leave you two alone?" Vanna said.

"Huh?" Link looked up at her with an innocent expression, and she couldn't help but laugh a little. His cheeks turned a light pink, and he put the sword into the new blue and gold scabbard that had appeared on his back when he transformed. "So... That's the thing Zant put in me?" he asked, reaching a hand out.

"Careful!" Midna said, drawing it to her chest. "You'll transform back into a beast if you touch it!"

Link took a step back. "We should get rid of it."

"Maybe that would be for the better, but on the other hand ... if we kept it, all I'd have to do is put it back in you for you to transform into a wolf again. And if you can go into your wolf form freely, that means I can take you through the twilight portals whenever." Midna's eyes narrowed and she grinned. "Since Zant was kind enough to give this to us, we should be thankful and use it all we can! All you have to do is tell me when you want to transform."

"But how's he supposed to tell you when he wants to transform back into a human?" Vanna said.

"I dunno. Bark three times?" Midna offered.

"Three barks it is," Link said.

Midna folded her hands behind her back. "So, um, now that you're a human again... There's something I need to talk to you both about. Would you mind coming with me to find something called the Mirror of Twilight? It's hidden somewhere in Hyrule, and it's our last potential link to Zant."

Link gave her a small smile and nodded.

She looked over to Vanna. "You too?" When she nodded, Midna smiled. "Thank you guys. I... I don't actually have any clue at all where the Mirror of Twilight is, though, so we'll have to ask around. We might find a clue in the bustle of Castle Town..."

Vanna frowned. "Castle Town isn't very safe for me right now..."

"You'll be safe. There'll be a lot of people in the streets during the day, and I'll be there with you," Link said.

"And I can warp you two away in an instant," Midna added. "Just ... better not to do that in front of a crowd, probably."

"Or maybe we could spend some time in Kakariko Village," Link suggested. "Renado is a wise man, and he has a lot of books. He might be able to find information about the mirror for us."

"That sounds good. Are you okay with that, Vanna?" Midna asked.

"Kakariko's good," she said.

"Good. So, shall we go?"

"Actually ... why don't we stay here for a bit?" Link said. He looked at Vanna. "You wanted to get some stuff off your chest back in Lakebed Temple, but you haven't had a chance to with everything that's happened since."

Right. She'd basically promised him she would tell him about what was bothering her. About her mom's delusions about her being her daughter, and how she realized that she could never have her own children and that any semblance of a normal future was stolen from her, and since then her whole spiritless ordeal had come up, so she wanted to get that off her chest, too... But there was so much to explain, some of which likely necessitated getting into uncomfortable details...

"I don't need to talk to you if you don't want to listen..." she said. "Actually, I've got a lot of things I'm interested in hearing from you, like about those stones you howled at, and the triangle thing that keeps showing up everywhere, and what was going on with you and those statues jumping around..."

"How's about I answer all your questions, then you let everything out?"

She sighed. "Really, you don't need to listen to my problems. It's probably stuff you're not interested in hearing about anyway."

"You know, I ain't sure it'll happen anymore, but before all this stuff started, I was lined up to be the next mayor of Ordon."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"That's got to do with me having to know how to listen to people and make them happy so I can be a good leader."

Link sat down and patted the ground in front of him, and looked up at Vanna expectantly with a hint of a smile on his lips.

...How could she have said no to that?


	26. Hope

Their conversation had lasted much longer than either of them had intended it to. Vanna had received all the answers she wanted from Link—he howled at those stones to let the Hero's Shade know he was ready to learn a new skill; that triangle symbol was called the Triforce, which she vaguely recognized the name of once he said it, and it had a long history that ended with him inheriting a piece; and he could ' _see_ ' places with his sixth sense that he could jump to in order to bring those stone guardians back to their original spots. He had finished answering her questions sooner than she'd have liked—then it was her turn, and she, reluctantly, poured her heart out.

She had started with the messages her mom had sent her in Lakebed, where Daina had revealed her delusions about Vanna being her daughter reborn, to which Link responded that Daina sounded delusional only because she loved her so much. Vanna corrected him—Daina loved  _her daughter_  that died as a child, not her; she was her own being. When he had realized that she'd gone out of her way to refer to herself as a  _being_  instead of a  _person_ , the conversation delved into explaining how different she truly was from humankind, which led into how she could never have her own children. It had been much more uncomfortable to talk about than she had anticipated, worsened by the fact that Link didn't really know anything about humanoid robots to begin with.

Each response she had given him prompted another question to answer. Yes, she  _looked_  female—yes, she had at least some of ' _the parts_ ,' and they were unquestionable enough to fool her—no, she wasn't sure that she had the specific parts necessary to actually  _carry_  a child—but even if she had a synthetic uterus as surrogate robots did, any child she carried could never be genetically  _hers_ , because she was not a biological being and she had no genetic material of her own. It was only when it finally came down to the matter of genetics that Link's questions took a personal shift, and the shift left Vanna questioning herself.

"When my parents died, the other adults in Ordon took me in and loved and raised me just the same. If you really wanna raise kids, why let some ' _genetic material_ ' stop you?"

She had stumbled over words before coming to the rationalization that it was because she wanted to be able to do all the things that human women could, things that she had once assumed she could do, too. It wasn't like she thought adoption didn't count so much as it was that it just wasn't something she had ever considered needing; she had planned to do things the normal way because she had never thought she was any different. That was what it came down to—she didn't want to be different.

His trite response left her rolling her eyes. "Ain't nothin' wrong with bein' a li'l different."

"Says you. It's always  _normal_  people who say that," she'd said.

"Yeah, says  _me_ , the completely normal guy who  _turn_ _s_ _into a wolf_ ," he'd replied.

"...Okay, but still—at least when you're not a wolf, you're a normal human, or Hylian, who can reproduce and grow and age, and you have a spirit..."

Then began the discussion on her spirit.

Though she truly appreciated the consolation and sympathy he had offered, the matter of her spirit, or lack thereof, was the one thing Link simply couldn't satisfy her on. He had suggested that maybe she did have a spirit and she was protected from the twilight like him and Zelda (that was ridiculous), or that maybe it was because she came from another world and spirits worked differently there, and finally, that it didn't matter at all whether she had one or not, because it didn't change who she was. She held that it  _did_  change who she was, because it set her apart from humanity even further. Eventually, he told her that she would come to accept it one day.

The conversation had managed to loop back around to the same points several times, and by the end, Vanna was feeling at least somewhat better about most of them. She still wished her mom could see her as her own ' _being_ ,' and she still wished to be a human who could do normal human things, but Link had a way of making any plight not seem as hopeless.

After she'd had enough of discussing her feelings with him for about the rest of eternity, and both thanked him and apologized for nearly talking his ears off, Midna had warped them to Kakariko Village.

They had only intended to spend a few days there, long enough for Renado to see if he could find information about the Mirror of Twilight, and long enough for Zi to realize that Vanna was nowhere to be found within the walls of Castle Town.

Initially, Vanna was worried about staying in the village too long for fear of Zi, but upon their arrival, Renado told them that he had already passed through on the day she and Link had left for Lakebed Temple. Feeling assured that he wasn't likely to pass through again soon, Vanna became comfortable staying around. She had fun with the kids, getting to practice shooting targets with the bow for Malo and Talo's entertainment, and getting roped into playing dolls with Beth when she wasn't busying herself with comforting the Zora prince. She made a point to spend time with Ilia as well, hoping that seeing more of the kindhearted girl she was would assuage the irrational jealousy that still sometimes flared up when Link talked about her affectionately. Just as Vanna did, Link became comfortable staying around and spending time with the kids and Ilia.

And that was how a few days became three weeks.

Surprisingly, Midna didn't complain, not even after the end of the first week when Renado informed them that he'd looked through every book he had and found nothing about the Mirror of Twilight at all. He'd suggested speaking to someone in Castle Town with a more vast collection of books, or searching the library there themselves. Later that night when Link and Vanna were outside by themselves, Midna had come out of Vanna's shadow and expressed disappointment that Renado didn't have any leads, but she hadn't attempted to rush them to Castle Town as Vanna expected. "Wherever the Mirror of Twilight is, it's not going anywhere," she'd said. "As long as Zant's not in Hyrule, everyone should be fine..."

When Link and Vanna decided it was time to bid Kakariko Village farewell, it was of their own volition, though the decision was spurred by Link receiving a letter from Telma asking him to come to her bar and bring Vanna. Vanna was nervous to go at first (so much so that she couldn't sleep at all the night before they were to leave), imagining that Zi himself might have requested Telma to ask for her in the letter. She forced herself as much as she could to focus on the positives of going to the town.

Ever since Link had told her that the Hero's Shade was waiting outside of Castle Town after he howled at the whistling stone for him, she'd been excited at the prospect of getting to see him, and now she finally could. He had been receptive to all the venting she did when they weren't training during the few days they'd spent together while she was in Ordon, and being that he was something of a spirit himself, she had hopes that he could give her answers that no living person could.

After Link stopped at Barnes' to buy some bombs, they were off. They went just outside of the village to where nobody could see them, and then Midna turned Link into a wolf and warped them away.

The nearest twilight portal to Castle Town was by the bridge leading to the western entrance, whereas the Hero's Shade was waiting south of the town. Link surmised that it'd be easier to get to him by going through the town instead of around the wide moat surrounding it, so they came to the agreement to go to Telma's first and see the Hero's Shade on their way out.

Vanna's fear of running into Zi rapidly dissipated and became replaced with wonder when they entered the town. When she had been there before, it was dark and rainy, and there were pressing matters preventing her from taking in what little she did get to see. It was the opposite now—bright and sunny and bustling with life.

She had been expecting it to be very medieval, but in actuality, it was mainly the architecture that had a medieval feel to it. The people themselves were quirkier than anyone you would see in a history book. There were a lot of people with unnatural hair colors, and they all clearly cared about fashion, though Vanna couldn't say she found their sense of it to be appealing. Their outfits looked illogical and logical at the same time—like they threw on the first things they grabbed randomly from their closets, but in a way that everything ended up looking made to go together. She could see some similarities from the outfit Luda had given her to the outfits other women wore, and it was clear as ever that Luda hadn't been lying when she said it was simple for their standards. She felt under-dressed around them.

Though, feeling a bit under-dressed might not have taken up much space in her mind had she not realized that everyone seemed to be staring at her. She had never been one to feel so self-conscious before, but the way that people would look at her and then whisper to each other made her worried that they knew she didn't belong among them. She peeked down at her leg to make sure that her dress was covering the inhuman slash on her thigh. It was, of course—she knew before she even looked—but her uneasiness persisted. Maybe her hair had something to do with it, then. Most women wore their hair up, but hers was down...

"There—that's the swordsman everyone's been talking about," she picked out one woman's particularly loud nasal voice over the noisy chatter of the street.

"The one who rescued the Zora child?" another loud woman responded.

Vanna searched for where the voices came from in the crowd and saw two middle-aged women standing at a nearby vendor. Their eyes, like many others', seemed to be on her, but their words made it obvious that they were actually looking at Link as he walked alongside her.

Well, that was a relieving explanation—everyone was looking at him, not her.

"Did you hear those ladies talking about you?" she asked Link once they got to a smaller, quieter pathway.

"I heard a lot of people talking about me..."

She had no idea how he'd been able to hear more than those women with so many people speaking at once. "I didn't realize you were such a big deal here."

"Neither did I," he said bashfully.

When Vanna caught sight of a sign by an alley that read  _Telma's Bar_ , all her thoughts about the nosy townspeople vanished and her anxiety reared its head again. She tried to reassure herself that she didn't have much reason to believe Zi would still be there after three weeks. Still, she let herself fall behind Link so she wouldn't have to go in first. Link, mindful of her worries, looked around inside after opening the door.

"He's not in here," he said, turning back to her.

She let out the breath she'd been holding in, feeling like a weight was lifted off her, and followed him in.

The lighting in the bar was just as dingy as it had been at night time, though much like the streets, it was more alive. It wasn't packed by any standards, but several of the tables were taken this time around. The one that had been taken before still was, though the people around it weren't all the same. Shad was sitting in the seat where an older man had been sitting before, and a new man was sitting across from him. A woman that Vanna recalled seeing before was there still, too, leaning against the back wall.

Telma noticed them after the door had swung shut behind Vanna. She leaned over the bar she stood behind and grinned at them. "My, you two made it here quick!"

"You did say to come right away in your letter," Link said as they walked up to the bar.

"Mercy, but you have good timing. I was just talking about you!" She motioned to the back table with her hand. "Remember those friends I mentioned, the ones trying to help deal with all the troubles in Hyrule? These are the allies I wanted you to meet, honey. There's actually one more of us, but there's been a disturbing turn of events in the desert, so he's gone to check it out. You ought to be sociable and go talk to the folks who are here—they're a jolly bunch! And  _you_ , darling," she said, her eyes finally leaving Link and looking to Vanna, "have a friend looking for you."

Vanna tensed up. "He's not here, is he?"

"Not anymore. He was coming here often these past few weeks looking for you. When I went to write a letter asking Link here to visit, he asked me to ask for you to come along, too—but he got impatient. The friend of mine who went to go check out the desert, Auru, left earlier this morning with the woman who asked for his help, and your friend left with them. If only he'd waited a few more hours...!"

So she'd been right in her assumption that Zi asked Telma to ask for her. She knew it. Telma had no reason to ask for her otherwise.

"If only he'd waited a few more hours, I could be on my way to dying," Vanna finished her sentence harshly. "He's not my friend anymore. He wants me dead."

Telma's expression was caught between confusion and terror. "The boy you talked to here a few weeks ago? He's been speaking of you so fondly... Why would he want you dead?"

Vanna sighed. "It's a long story..."

"Well, I won't allow him in my bar ever again, okay? You're always safe here, honey. And if either of you ever need anything, I'll be here to help."

Someone from one of the tables walked up to the bar and asked for another drink then, so Link and Vanna took their leave to the table in the back. Shad gave Vanna a repentant look as they approached.

"I overheard what you said to Telma... I'm terribly sorry about the other week. I had no idea that boy meant such harm to you. I wouldn't have ushered you inside with him had I known," he said.

"It's all right. You didn't know any better," Vanna said with a shrug.

"Your name is Vanna, correct?" he asked, and she nodded. He looked at Link with a warm smile. "And you must be Link. I'm Shad. Wonderful to meet you. I've heard all you've been up to from Telma. You're rather formidable!"

"It seems the entire town has heard about me from Telma," Link said, looking embarrassed again.

"The townsfolk have been troubled lately with all the strange things that have been happening, and Telma thought it wise to spread word that there's someone out there braving the dangerous to help people. You've given everyone hope, old boy." Link looked even more flustered at that, his cheeks and ears an endearing shade of pink. "Even Ashei here was moved by the lengths you went to to save that Zora boy, and it takes a lot to impress her," Shad went on, gesturing to the woman leaning against the wall.

Ashei crossed her arms and looked at Link with a piercing gaze that almost made Vanna flinch back. "All the soldiers in Hyrule are cowards... It was unexpected to hear about a warrior with any courage, know what I mean?"

"Your actions truly have given hope," said the helmeted man sitting across from Shad. His voice, with its Southern twang, sounded familiar straightaway. Vanna wasn't surprised when he took off his helmet, revealing himself as Rusl—Colin's dad. He looked rougher than she'd remembered.

"Rusl?!" Link said. "What are you doing here? Uli..."

"She's still got a couple weeks left before she's due... I was only coming up here for a short visit." He sighed. "Ever since... You know. I've become troubled by my own inaction. You've inspired me to get back in touch with my friends here and help the cause as much as I can."

While he spoke, Vanna was looking over the large map spread out over the table. She noticed the names of a few places they had been, and names of places Zi had mentioned, like Snowpeak and the Arbiter's Grounds. The latter one, located in the Gerudo Desert to the west, gave her pause. The list of temples and bosses Zi had given her indicated that the Arbiter's Grounds was supposed to be the temple following Lakebed... And now they had finished Lakebed Temple, and Zi had headed to check out the desert.

_But_ , she told herself, he had never said anything about where they would have to go  _between_  the temples. They weren't looking for a temple—they were looking for the Mirror of Twilight. There was no guarantee that it was in the desert simply because the next temple was.

"So, you guys know a lot about Hyrule," Vanna started. The group collectively nodded. "Link and I need help finding something called the Mirror of Twilight, hidden somewhere in Hyrule. Do you know anything about it?"

They all looked at each other silently, then back to her. "I've never heard of such a thing," Shad said.

"Me either," Ashei said.

"Neither have I," Rusl said.

"Nonetheless, Auru might have," Shad said. "We each have our specialties, but Auru likely has the broadest knowledge of this land; he used to be a tutor for Princess Zelda. Come to think of it, I do believe I have heard him speak of  _a_  noteworthy mirror before... A cursed mirror, he called it. I can't be certain it's the same one you're searching for, however."

"Did he ever say where that cursed mirror was?" Vanna asked.

"It's someplace in the desert, I understand," he said. "As Telma told you, he's actually gone to investigate the desert today, with a woman from the desert herself, at that. Though, he was only going as far as a lookout tower by Lake Hylia—he's a bit old to be crossing the desert these days. Perhaps you should try to catch up with them and ask about the mirror."

Vanna tried her hardest to hold back a grimace as she looked at Link. He didn't seem bothered by the information—in fact, he seemed pleased that they had a lead already—but he probably wasn't thinking about the fact that Zi had left with Auru like she was.

"Sounds like a good enough idea," Link said to her. "Couldn't hurt to go ahead and ask him. We could always come back to the library here later if he can't help us."

"I-I guess..." she said.

"I'll help you search the library if the need arises. I'm afraid to say I've yet to read even half the books there, but I am quite familiar with it," Shad said.

"We might be seeing you soon, then," Link said.

"Be careful out there, Link," Rusl said. "Please."

"Always am," Link said. He straightened himself out and turned to Vanna. "Ready to go?"

She merely nodded. She wasn't really ready to potentially run into Zi again, but she was about as ready as she ever could be.

After being bumped into and nearly knocked over by rushing townspeople so many times that she lost count, they made it out of the southern exit. The Hero's Shade, in his golden wolf form, was waiting next to a staircase. Vanna realized for the first time that his being a wolf made sense—like great-great-grandfather like great-great-grandson. Being a (sort of) werewolf had to run in the family.

They came to a stop in front of him. He stood up and looked at them one after another. In the blink of an eye, he split into two separate wolves. One of them pounced at Vanna, and then her vision went white.

When she could see again, she was back in the mystical, snowy realm of her subconscious, and the golden wolf was sitting some ten feet ahead of her. She hadn't realized how much she missed being there. Even though it had only been a month, she felt nostalgic. She longed to go back to those days in Ordon, back before her life had gone entirely off the rails.

With a howl, the golden wolf transformed.

"We meet again," he said.

"Finally," I said. "There's ... something I've been wanting to ask you about."

"You may ask anything. But first, I must ask you: do you wish to train with me today?"

"Depends... I get that you're this master swordsman, but are you also a bowman, by any chance?"

"I am a master of the bow as well."

She grabbed her bow and an arrow. "Then will you help me get better at using one?"

"That bow was..." he trailed off, then nodded his head once. "Yes."

Several targets appeared at varying distances away from her as the Hero's Shade came to her side. She went ahead and got into position and nocked the arrow, aiming for the closest target. The Shade, once stopped, was silent for a moment.

"...Who taught you to hold it like that?" he said. He reached out and repositioned her himself, from her legs to her fingers to the angle of her arms. "There. Now, you may start shooting, and ask the question you have for me."

She loosed the arrow, and to her surprise, it was a bullseye. She wanted to be proud of herself, but she knew it was only because he had righted her aim for her.

"So..." Vanna said as she pulled out another arrow, "it's ... not one specific question I have for you. It's ... a lot, I guess."

"Pertaining to what?"

She shot that arrow at a new target and missed. "...I don't have a spirit or soul or whatever, and I wanna know what that means," she said, trying to feign indifference.

"You have no spirit, but you do have a soul."

"Huh?" Her bow arm fell to her side, and she looked up at him. "What does  _that_  mean? And how do you know?"

"To have a soul is to be alive. I know you have a soul, for if you were not alive, I could not enter your subconscious as I do. This is what has been plaguing you—worry that you are not truly alive, correct?"

She pursed her lips. "No. I know I'm alive, even if I might not be by some standards. There's no reason why I shouldn't be considered alive when trees and grass are alive, and they can't even talk or move on their own or  _think_. It's just... I'm worried that I can't be a  _person_  without a spirit. That not having a spirit puts me on the same level of trees and grass—technically alive, but ... with nothing ...  _deeper_ , I guess."

"For someone worried that she has nothing ' _deeper_ ,' you do seem to be considering this very deeply."

"I guess I have a tendency to do that," she quietly said. "But... Does that mean you think I count as a person? Because I can think deeply?"

"What I think should not matter to you. Look into yourself to find what you believe."

Vanna frowned and huffed. "You won't tell me what not having a spirit says about me?"

"I will simply not tell you my thoughts on whether or not you count as a person, as that is something only you should answer for yourself. I believe it is fair to inform you of what your lack of spirit says about you objectively. However, I ask that you shoot another target first."

She quickly got out and nocked another arrow, wanting his answer as soon as possible. He warned her not to rush, but he didn't get to finish his sentence before she was already letting the arrow go. She missed the target she was aiming for so terribly that she unintentionally almost hit another.

"As your skills improve, it will not take as long to aim with confidence, but a novice such as yourself must take your time to aim properly if you want to hit your target. Try again, slowly."

She did as he said, and she hit another target, but only barely. "Does that count for you?"

"Yes, that counts."

"So, what does not having a spirit mean?"

"The spirit is a divine gift that allows one to exist with neither body nor soul, and thus one without spirit would cease to exist when the soul departs and the body perishes."

"...Is that just a complicated way of saying there's no afterlife for me? No heaven, no hell, no anything?"

"Yes."

She turned her head, not wanting him to see if she started to cry. She tried to reason with herself in the same way she did when she first learned that she didn't have a spirit, by telling herself that it didn't matter because she never believed in that stuff in the first place, but that didn't make it hurt any less. An afterlife was one more thing she could never have. Everyone else would all get to go on to eternal paradise (or perhaps eternal agony) while she would go on to eternal nihility. She would be nothing one day and she would stay nothing forever, and forever, and forever, and forever...

She gulped and attempted to banish the thought from her mind. She still had a soul, so maybe she could live on in some other way. She blinked back tears and got back to shooting arrows to keep her thoughts more occupied. "What about my soul, then, when I die? What does ' _the soul departs_ ' mean? That it dies, too...?"

"After the soul leaves the body without life, it may lie dormant forever, or it may go on to inhabit another vessel to bring it life one day."

She nocked another arrow. "Kind of like ... like reincarnation?"

"It  _is_  reincarnation."

"Oh..." With his affirmation, her mind went elsewhere, causing her to miss the target she'd been aiming for. "If souls can reincarnate, can spirits go from one body to another?"

"Spirits do not reincarnate in the same way souls do, but we are able to go from one body to another, though only if we are denied from heaven and remain on earth. I am inside you now."

"You took over my body and you're making me hallucinate, and I'm not really here in this realm, is what you're saying?"

"Yes."

"But, if you  _wanted_  to..." she said as she successfully shot a target, "...could you just live in my body, without making me hallucinate?"

"I suppose I could possess you if I had the desire to." He paused. "You are thinking about acquiring a spirit of your own," he said. It wasn't a question of if she was, but rather a plain statement that he knew what she was getting at.

She shrugged. "How could I  _not_  think about that?"

"I have never heard of such a thing being done; I was merely saying that I believe it  _could_  be done, not that it ever would. Lingering spirits wander the world searching for closure to the life they lost, and permanently possessing somebody is unlikely to bring the closure they seek. And you, the possessed, would no longer fully be yourself with a spirit that was never yours living through you. It is not something you should wish for."

There went whatever hope she had for that—not that she had any idea how she could possibly manage to basically steal a spirit for herself anyway.

Vanna shot an arrow at the farthest target and missed it sorely. She hesitated after nocking another.

"...Why would a spirit be denied from heaven?" she asked.

"Regrets."

She looked up at him. It was impossible to see any emotion on his skeletal face, but that one word had enough melancholy in its essence that it wasn't hard to imagine him with a frown.

"I am done with Link," he said suddenly. "There is still much for you to learn. Do not neglect your training between now and the time we meet again. I will return you to consciousness now."

Before she could question him further, everything faded away.


	27. Hot

When Vanna's vision returned, she was slumped over on her knees, and Link was at her side in the same position. The Hero's Shade was no longer in front of them. Instead, Midna was floating above where he had been. Vanna was slower getting to her feet than Link was.

"Now that you're both done with him, are you ready to go?" Midna asked. "There's a twilight portal to Lake Hylia, so we'll be with that Auru guy in no time."

They responded with nods.

As much as Vanna still hated Midna's warping, she could tell that Link had it worse by needing to transform. He never said anything, but she could see the way his face contorted in pain during the short seconds before his transformation was complete.

The warp left them in front of the Spirit's Spring cave. Rather than barking three times to signal that he wanted to transform, Link gave Vanna a look and then started off along the bank. She wanted to ask why he was headed the way he was. There was clearly no lookout tower down here, and the incline leading to the field was in the opposite direction. He seemed like he knew what he was doing, though, and she knew he wouldn't be able to answer her anyway.

She realized soon enough why he was headed that way; there was another stone for him to howl at. She hadn't thought they would get to see the Hero's Shade again so soon, but she was thankful that they could. There were still more things she wanted to know, things beyond fighting techniques. He'd answered the questions she had about herself—even if she was let down by those answers (not that he was at fault for that)—and now she wanted to know about him. He seemed like he hadn't wanted to explain the regrets that kept him out of heaven, but that little bit of insight into his life only left her more curious about who he was.

After Link finished howling and transformed back into a human, they turned and went the right way out of the lake's basin. Vanna looked for the lookout tower Shad had said Auru would be at on their way up, but she didn't see it at first, nor did she remember ever seeing anything that she thought was a lookout tower by the lake either of the times she had ridden there. It turned out that she was envisioning a lookout tower as something different from what it really was; Shad had actually been referring to the towers at the ends of the bridge. A dapple gray horse and a Bullbo were grazing nearby the occupied tower.

Even with the sun shining behind them and how far up they were, it was clear that two people were up on one of the towers. What wasn't clear was who was who. One was much, much taller than the other, which left Vanna wondering if that was Zi and the shorter one was Auru, but then she remembered they had also set out with a woman. She crossed her fingers as they got closer, hoping that Zi had left and that the tall person was Auru and the short one the woman.

Link started climbing the ladder up the tower first. Vanna's heart calmed itself when he got to the top and made no indication that Zi was up there. She finished climbing up, and was relieved to see for herself that it really was only Auru and the woman.

She could barely pay any mind to Auru, though. All she could pay attention to was the woman who was at least two feet taller than her. She was extremely muscular yet curvaceous at the same time, which her midriff-baring outfit helped showcase. She had pure red hair, brown skin, and golden eyes. Her large nose and wide-set eyes weren't features that Vanna ever would have thought she could possibly find attractive on anyone, but they somehow made her even more alluring.

"I take it neither of you have ever seen a Gerudo before," she said with a hint of amusement in her voice.

Vanna hadn't realized how much she'd been staring, but she was glad to hear at least that apparently Link had been, too.

"Master Link, is it?" Auru said, looking at him.

Link nodded. "No need to call me master."

"And you must be Vanna," Auru said. She nodded. "Your friend, Zi, has been searching for you. He came along with us in hopes of finding you, but he left for the desert not long after we arrived here."

Great. Hopefully the heat would knock him on his ass. "Yeah, Telma told us he came with you. You're Auru, right?" she said.

"Yes, and this is a new ally of mine, Mahana," he said, motioning toward the woman. She waved at her name. "Link, I have heard all about your courageous deeds from Telma. Now... I imagine that you two have heard of the strange events in the desert and come to investigate yourselves, no?"

"We heard you came to check out a disturbing turn of events in the desert, but we didn't hear any details," Link said. "Actually, Shad told us you might have information we need. We came to ask about the Mirror of Twilight."

Auru recoiled at the name being spoken. "Yes, I know of the Mirror of Twilight... Deep in the Gerudo Desert is a prison that once held the worst criminals this land has ever known—the Arbiter's Grounds. The criminals sentenced to death were sent directly to the underworld by that very mirror that was kept in the prison... The cursed mirror and the malice of the doomed inmates remain in the Arbiter's Grounds to this day. I have theorized that the evil currently plaguing Hyrule is related to this wicked place, and I came to learn more when I heard that the Gerudo share my theory..."

"There's so much darkness still contained within the Arbiter's Grounds that the entire prison casts an evil aura strong enough to awaken monsters in droves," Mahana said. "Bulblins have made an encampment around the prison and they've been raiding Gerudo territories nonstop these past weeks. Every time we fight them off, they come back with more. We're becoming outnumbered, so despite it being embarrassing to have to ask for help, I went to Castle Town to see if their soldiers would lend a hand. Turns out they're all wimps."

"All the good Castle Town soldiers were killed in the attack on the castle weeks back," Auru came to their defense.

Mahana sighed and crossed her arms. "I hate to admit it, but even the remaining Gerudo soldiers are too fearful of the Arbiter's Grounds to do more than fight the monsters off as they come. I'm convinced that clearing the evil beings that remain inside is the only way to stop it from spawning any more monsters... And it seems that nobody is brave enough to go inside except me."

"We'll go with you," Link said.

She looked back and forth from Vanna to Link, then let out a booming laugh. "You tiny little things? If you're suicidal, there are more comfortable ways to go out, you know."

"Mahana, you heard of Link's feats from Telma," Auru said. "If there is anyone else out there capable of fending off the evils of the prison, it is him..."

"Yeah, yeah," Mahana said through the remainder of her laughter. Her narrow eyes landed on Vanna. "And what about you?"

Vanna's mouth opened, but she couldn't find the words to say.

"She's a good archer," Link said.

She felt her cheeks get warm. She appreciated how supportive he was about her using the bow—he'd cheered along with Talo and Malo over the previous few weeks when she'd practiced shooting targets for them—but the compliment felt undeserved. Especially considering she'd just learned earlier that day that she wasn't even holding the arrows correctly...

"An archer would be helpful for taking down the Bulblin guards on the watchtowers..." Mahana said. She put her hands on her hips and huffed. "If you two really want to put your lives on the line, then we'll leave tonight. We should be able to make it to the retreat by tomorrow morning or afternoon, then we'll launch our attack on the Bulblin encampment tomorrow night, and then it's Arbiter's Grounds time."

"Why leave tonight?" Link asked. "Why not now?"

"My people were made to handle the desert— _yours_  were not. Your skin would be as red as my hair after ten minutes in the desert sun."

"I've never gotten sunburn," Vanna said. She hadn't meant to state that realization out loud. She'd always put on sunscreen before going to beaches, figuring that she'd get burned otherwise, but now that she knew what she was, she realized that the sunscreen was pointless all along. Because of her complexion, she'd likely have been burnt by the sun regardless if she were a human.

Mahana raised an eyebrow and looked her over. "With skin like yours, I'd be inclined to believe you've never stepped foot in the sun at all."

Another realization: she'd never tanned in the slightest. But gingers didn't really do that anyway, so she guessed she had an excuse for that. "Well, the sun's out right now, so..." she said.

"There might only be one sun, but the sun you know and the sun of the desert are different. But, if you two would rather leave now and burn, be my guest."

Vanna looked at Link and he shrugged. "Summers in Ordon get hot. I think I could take it," he said.

"You passed out from the heat in the Goron Mines," she said.

"That was inside a  _volcano_. The desert can't be  _that_  bad."

"Who's gonna drag your unconscious body through the desert if you  _do_  pass out?"

"We'll be riding on Bullbos," Mahana cut in. "You two will have to fetch wild ones, but even those are obedient so long as you don't anger them. They'll have no problem carrying an unconscious body."

Link gave Vanna a look that asked for her approval.

"Let's go, then."

* * *

It wasn't long before she regretted approving.

To call the desert  _hot_  was an understatement. She had foolishly hoped that it being autumn would help, but it didn't. The temperature might not have been as hot as the temperature in the mines, but it was close enough.

Link and Vanna had each managed to find their own Bullbos quickly, though she wished they had quicker. Despite her boots being knee-high, sand had somehow managed to get into them during the short amount of time they were walking through the desert. She had taken them off—along with her socks and overshirt—once she was on the Bullbo, but she could still feel the little grains digging into her legs where they pressed against the Bullbo's bristly sides.

Along with regretting approving, she regretted not changing back into her bodysuit first. Even having her dress hiked up around her thighs and her long sleeves pushed up to her elbows didn't do much.

Link, too, had shed layers of his clothes early on. He started with his tunic, gloves, and bracers, then came his chain mail and—surprisingly—his beloved hat, and finally, he took off his undershirt against Mahana's warning. She'd said it would protect his shoulders from being burnt and help him not dehydrate from sweat loss, but he'd said it was just too hot.

He might not have been too concerned about dehydrating, but Vanna was concerned for him, so she let him have all of their water supply. He'd said she should have some too, but she insisted that he needed it more than she did.

As if she wasn't already displeased enough, Moldorms started to appear. They were ugly little monsters that burrowed in the sand and jumped out to attack. One of them jumped up and bit her right leg, and her frantic attempt to get it off upset her Bullbo and made it rear up and take off running. She was thrown off, and even after she collided with the sand—which wasn't as soft a landing as one might think—the Moldorm was still latched onto her leg.

Link jumped off his Bullbo and ran over to her, all sweaty and red. She had managed to rip the Moldorm off by the time he made it to her, but he stabbed and killed it before it could attack again. Her skin was torn in the three places its fangs had snagged her.

"Are you all right?" he asked, worriedly looking over her leg.

"I'm fine," she panted out. She was still trying to make sense of it all—everything had happened so fast.

Luckily, they had been riding a bit behind Mahana at that point, so she didn't see the Moldorm bite Vanna. She didn't realize anything had happened until Vanna's Bullbo ran past her, and she looked back then. Seeing them on the ground, she turned her Bullbo around and started to race back. Vanna hurried to put her boots back on so she wouldn't notice the cuts. She was in disbelief when Mahana came to a stop next to them and there wasn't a single drop of sweat on her body or any sign that the heat was affecting her whatsoever.

"What happened?" Mahana asked.

"I just fell off," Vanna said.

Her lie by omission must have been convincing enough; Mahana didn't ask if there was a reason she had fallen. "Are you hurt?"

"No..."

"Then run up and catch your Bullbo, and try not to fall off again. We'll take a break when we get somewhere safe."

With that, Mahana turned again and set off.

Link waited until she was far enough ahead to not hear him, then said, "I'll have to stitch you up later... Do you think you could walk all the way to your Bullbo, or do you wanna ride mine until we get to it?"

"It really didn't damage my leg that bad; it didn't cut any deeper than my skin. I could walk... But I'd rather ride with you, if you don't mind? It's so much hotter while walking. At least there's a breeze while riding," Vanna said.

He grabbed her hand and helped her to her feet, then helped her get up on his Bullbo. While they weren't as tall as Epona was, she still had trouble getting on them by herself, though she likely would have been able to get on without being lifted up if they had stirrups.

Link got up in front of her and took off. It was much too hot to go wrapping her arms around his midsection like she would while they were on Epona, so she settled on holding his shoulders to keep herself balanced. He winced at the touch, and she muttered an apology—she'd thought he was merely red from the heat, not that he was sunburnt already.

He assisted her in getting onto her Bullbo when they got up to it, and then they were off again.

Several hours passed before they took the break Mahana promised. They got up onto a rocky outcropping where Moldorms couldn't reach them, leaving their Bullbos lounging in the sand below. Link and Mahana were both eating food they had packed, but Vanna wasn't eating any of her food. She didn't have the energy to make herself eat. Every breath she took felt as if she were breathing in flames, and it was progressively getting worse. She couldn't tell what it was, but something else had changed during the short climb up the outcropping that left her feeling off.

Link held a canteen out to her. "You should have some water. You look awful."

"That's what every girl wants to h-hear," she mumbled. "I told you already—don't worry about me. You need the water more than I do. You're n-not looking so great yourself..."

"We have a long while yet before we reach our next destination," Mahana said. She pointed a finger. "Do you see the mesa  _all_  the way over there? That's where we're going. It looks far away, but appearances are always deceptive in this desert—it's even farther than you think it is."

She hadn't needed to tell Vanna how deceptive the desert was; she'd already noticed that the faraway pillars of the Arbiter's Grounds, wavering in the heat, had yet to appear any closer despite all the time they'd spent riding.

"So you should drink now, because it'll be  _hours_  before we reach the oasis in the mesa," Mahana finished.

Vanna sighed and took the canteen from Link, if only to get them off her back. It was somewhat refreshing to have water wash over her tongue, but the water had gotten warm and didn't help cool her down at all. If anything, she felt even warmer after drinking it. She handed it back to Link after a couple swigs.

She decided to start a new conversation before he could say anything about her not drinking enough. "Th-the town out there looks like it's pretty close to the mesa... So why are we going to a gi-giant hill instead?"

"The mesa isn't just any giant hill; the Thieves' Retreat is in there. You simply can't see the entrance from afar. If it were just you and I, we would go to the town instead of the retreat, but your little boyfriend is a male, and males aren't allowed in the town under any circumstances."

Mahana's response made it clear to Vanna what had changed, why she had suddenly started feeling off. She knew that her heartbeat should have picked up the second Mahana referred to Link as her boyfriend—but it didn't. Because it wasn't beating at all.

Her hand flew up to her chest and pressed against it. Nothing.

"What's wrong?" Link asked.

She wasn't sure what to say with Mahana sitting there. She didn't want her to know she wasn't human, but there was no way to say  _my heart stopped beating_  without making it obvious that she wasn't. "Just—it's just heartburn, that's all," she said.

" _Heartburn?_ " he repeated, giving her a dubious look. He knew better than to buy that. "Is that what's been making you stutter?"

She nodded and lowered her shaky hand, then took in a deep breath. "Y-yeah. It's fine. I'm okay. Nothing's wrong."

He also didn't buy that, but neither did she. Something was definitely wrong. It didn't matter that her heart was fake and didn't pump blood throughout her. It was supposed to be beating, pointless as that beating may have been, and it wasn't.

"...Wait, males aren't allowed in th-the town?" Vanna asked.

"No. They are allowed to be in the retreat, however, though only with the permission of a Gerudo," Mahana said. "In the past when the retreat was our main fortress, it was very rare for us to give a male permission to be there, but we've changed. Many Gerudo now live in the retreat with their Hylian boyfriends or husbands and raise their children there together. When Gerudo Town was created, the custom of disallowing men was preserved there."

"Vanna, I think you need more water," Link said.

"Y-you didn't say anything about the Gerudo when you t-told me about all the different types of people in Hyrule."

He frowned. "They slipped my mind. I never heard about 'em much as a kid, and I actually thought they weren't around anymore, like the robots that used to live in the desert... And speaking of those robots, do you think they might've died out because they didn't try enough to keep themselves from gettin' too hot in the desert?"

For some reason, she got the feeling there was a double meaning somewhere in his words.

"The Ancient Robots were very adept at not succumbing to the heat," Mahana said. "They only died out when the last humans who knew how to upkeep them died. We actually have some of the remains of the robots in the retreat, but nobody has had luck reviving them."

"George could revive them," Vanna said.

One of Mahana's brows perked up. "George?"

"You know, Mr. Rider? His first n-name is George. George Anthony Rider."

Link and Mahana shared a look Vanna couldn't comprehend, then Mahana reached out to touch her forehead. She frowned like Link.

"You are  _hot_ ," Mahana said.

Vanna smiled. "Thanks, you too."

Link then touched her forehead as Mahana had, but promptly pulled his hand away as if it had burned his fingers. His frown deepened. "No, Vanna, seriously, you are  _hot_  hot."

"Thanks, you too. Too."

"Does she normally get like this in the heat?" Mahana asked.

"She was okay when we were in Death Mountain together... But we weren't in there even half the time we've been out here."

"We're closer to the retreat at this point than we are to the field. We should hurry to get her there."

"W-why are you talking about me like I'm not here?" Vanna said.

"You don't seem like you're here very much," Mahana said.

"I'm like, like a foot away from you. Obviously I am h-here."

"I don't mean you're not next to me, I mean you seem like your head isn't in the right place."

"It's on my n-neck. Como siempre."

"...Yeah, she needs to get out of the sun."

Mahana stood up and then bent over with her arms outstretched, so Vanna stretched her arms out to her, expecting a hug. She picked Vanna up and threw her over her shoulder. Vanna heard her say more to Link, but she couldn't decipher it. She was preoccupied with Mahana's poofy purple pants. She might have called them that out loud.

In what seemed like the blink of an eye, she was no longer staring at the back of Mahana's pants. She was on a Bullbo again. She felt someone behind her on it. She couldn't tell if it was Link or Mahana at first, but then she realized their chest was flat against her back, so it had to be Link.

"¿Qué está pasando?" Vanna asked.

"Do you have  _any_  idea what she just said?" Mahana asked.

"No idea," Link said. "Hey, Vanna, I don't know if you can understand me right now, but we're going to the retreat to get you cool, okay?"

"I  _am_  cool," she grumbled.

As the Bullbo beneath her took off, everything got really blurry.

And then it got really dark.

* * *

Vanna curled up and sighed contentedly. The bed she was laying on was the comfiest she'd been on in a long time, rivaling her own bed. The silky sheets and pillow felt heavenly against her bare arms and side, though she wished the blanket would keep her warmer...

...She had been wearing a long-sleeved dress, so why was the silk touching so much of her skin?

Her eyes shot open to see a stone wall and the off-white sheets she was laying on. Her heart started to race. Where  _was_  she?

She sat up and looked down at herself before anything else. She was wearing a bandeau top and maroon harem pants, and her right calf was bandaged. Seeing the bandage made her recall a brief memory; she had been riding a boar in the desert when a monster bit her leg. More details came to her the longer she tried to remember them. The name of the Gerudo woman they had been traveling with was just beyond her grasp, along with whatever had happened between the Moldorm biting her leg and ending up in this bedroom.

Hoping that something in it would jog her memory, she turned to inspect the room. Aside from the bed, the only other furniture in the small room was a nightstand with a lit candle on it and a red couch. Sleeping on that couch was none other than Link, wearing only his pants, with his right arm bandaged. His skin was burnt, especially his nose, cheeks, and shoulders.

"Link?" she called.

He didn't stir, but her shadow did. Midna appeared in front of her.

"We thought you'd never wake up!" Midna said.

Her loudness managed to wake Link. He blinked a few times, and his eyes widened when they focused on Vanna. He sat up, accidentally knocking his undershirt he'd been using as a makeshift pillow to the floor.

"You're awake," he yawned out.

Vanna poured out questions as they came to mind. "How long was I out? Where are we and when did we get here? What happened to your arm? What happened to  _me?_ And who the hell changed my clothes and  _why?_ "

Link stood up and started to walk over to the bed, grabbing and putting on his undershirt on the way. "Mahana changed your clothes to keep you cool," he said as he sat on the bed next to her.

"Mahana," she repeated. That rung a bell. "The Gerudo woman?"

"The one we came here with, yeah. And, uh... I don't know if you remember, but you got bit by a Moldorm and it tore up your leg. And Mahana saw it when she changed you, so... I had to tell her you're a robot," Link said, rubbing the nape of his neck. "Well, she kinda figured it out herself, but I confirmed it. Hope you're not mad at me."

Vanna sighed. "I mean... I didn't want anyone else to know, but I'm not mad at you. If you told her when she  _didn't_  see my leg, yeah I'd be mad, but if she already had a clue, I can't be mad at you for telling her."

"I'd never tell anyone if I didn't have to. I stitched you up before she put the bandage over your leg, by the way." He looked at his arm and pulled a face. "And the same thing happened to my arm as your leg, only with a lot more blood. A Moldorm with a real high jump decided that my arm looked like a nice snack on the way here after you passed out."

"I passed out?"

"That wasn't obvious?"

"...In hindsight, maybe," she quietly admitted. "I just didn't think the heat was a problem for me after the Goron Mines... Maybe it was just the prolonged exposure to the heat that was the problem this time. But when did I pass out anyway? After the Moldorm bit me? I can't remember anything after that..."

"It was a few hours after that. We stopped to take a break and you started actin' all weird." He smiled, appearing to be holding back a laugh. "It really was worrying ... but it was sorta funny. Right before you passed out, you kept on saying  _'poofy purple pants_ ,' and you said a few things that weren't in Hylian..."

"And you called Link hot," Midna said.

...

Vanna wished the heat would have just killed her.

She covered her face with her hands, plopped back on the bed, and groaned as Link and Midna burst into laughter.

"If it's any consolation," Midna said through her giggles, "you also called Mahana hot."

Vanna groaned again, which only invigorated Midna's laughing.

At least a little bit of good came out of Midna relaying what Vanna said; it brought up some memories from around the time she'd said those things. She remembered being scared because of her heart not beating, which was back in working order now. She also vaguely remembered Mahana saying that they were going to the Thieves' Retreat, that males were barred from entering Gerudo Town, and something about there being defunct robots in the retreat.

"Are we in the Thieves' Retreat now?" Vanna asked.

"Hey, don't try to change the subject!" Midna said.

"Yes. We got here yesterday evening. We're in Mahana's parents' house, in her little sister's old bedroom," Link answered.

"What time is it?" Vanna asked.

"'Bout dusk, I'd guess? I tried gettin' some sleep early so I wouldn't be tired in case you'd wake up and want to leave for the Arbiter's Grounds tonight." As if just talking about sleep suddenly made him sleepy again, he yawned. It made Vanna realize that she wanted more sleep, too.

She finally pulled her hands off her face, feeling mostly over her bout of embarrassment, and she propped herself up on her elbows. "We don't have to go tonight, do we? I know I was just out of it for more than a day, but I'm actually still kind of tired..."

"Nah. Mahana still wants to leave at nighttime, but it doesn't have to be tonight. We can go when we're ready."

"Okay. I'm not ready."

"Good, me either." Link lay back and closed his eyes, leaving his legs dangling off the edge. "This bed is really cozy..."

"Want me to take the couch tonight?" she offered.

"I don't mind sharing the bed if you don't mind."

Midna opened her mouth to say something, so Vanna glared at her. She giggled instead.

"If you really don't mind, then..." Vanna trailed off.

"It's fine. I used to share a bed with Ilia all the time when we were young." To Vanna's surprise, hearing that didn't make her too jealous (though it was likely only because he'd specified that they did so when they were young, highlighting the innocence behind it). It was actually kind of sweet.

"I guess I'll be sleeping in the shadows..." Midna said before dramatically sighing.

"You can sleep on the bed too if you want," Link said as he got to his feet. "You're little, there's enough room."

"I do tend to prefer the comfort of a nice, dark shadow to fall asleep in... But now that you mention it, I think I will sleep on the bed." Midna smiled at Vanna. "Scooch over to the wall. I want to sleep in the middle."

Vanna would have glared at her again if Link wasn't looking. "That's twice the chance for you to accidentally get crushed by one of us rolling over in our sleep."

"I'll take my chances. Scoot."

Vanna humphed and moved over. Midna crawled up with the blanket in hand and lay down on her side next to her, and brought the blanket up to her shoulders, smiling still.

Link pinched out the flame of the candle, sending the room into total darkness. Vanna heard the shifting of fabric and a tiny squeak of the metal bedstead as he settled in for the night.

"Sleep tight," Midna said in a gentle, melodious tone. "Don't let the shadow bugs bite!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We gettin' extra canon divergent up in here.
> 
> Not a depiction of an actual scene, but I wanted to sketch Mahana and Vanna in her outfit from the end.


	28. The Bulblin Camp

"They raided the town again! You need to get up and come with me,  _now!_ "

Vanna bolted upright, shocked out of her sleep, and saw the backlit silhouette of someone standing in the doorway. In her hazy state, it took a second for things to click into place. The person in the doorway was Mahana, and she was yelling about  _them_  raiding the town— _them_ , meaning the Bulblins from the Arbiter's Grounds.

"You're up? You need to come too, and bring your bow! I'll be waiting outside.  _Hurry!_ "

Mahana had disappeared from the doorway before she finished speaking, and Link had shot up out of the bed as well. Vanna scrambled to follow, getting her feet tangled in the blanket in the process. She made it out of the bedroom a few seconds after Link and found him over by a tall table strapping on his belts while Mahana rushed out of the house. All of her stuff was on the table next to Link's in a disorganized pile.

Midna appeared as the door slammed shut behind Mahana. "There goes our nice night of sleep, huh? Vanna, just get your bow and strap the quiver and pouch to your belt—I'll put everything you don't need right now in your pouch for you! Same goes for you, Link!"

Vanna ran over to the table, slung her bow over her shoulder, and hurried to attach the quiver and pouch to her belt. Her sword, shield, and discarded clothes went up in little black squares and flickered away, along with Link's outerwear that he was forgoing. He was finishing pulling on his boots as Midna dove back down into Vanna's shadow.

"Why didn't you leave  _my_  boots out for me?" Vanna asked.

"Link was already putting his on."

"You can put them on later," he said. "Let's go."

He grabbed her hand and pulled her out of the door Mahana had left through. Mahana stood several feet from the door, arms crossed, tapping a foot impatiently. She wore gauntlets and greaves she didn't have on before and she had a sword at each hip. When she noticed them, she took off running, yelling for them to follow. Link let go of Vanna's hand, and they ran after her.

Vanna tried to take in her surroundings while running, partially so that she would remember how to get back to Mahana's house if she ever needed to, but mainly out of curiosity. Steep walls shot up around the edges of the retreat, and the houses, stacked atop one another like toy blocks, looked to be made out of stone taken directly from the mesa they were nestled inside of. Mahana's house was one of many on a higher level, and the stairs that led down from it had been made from the same stone.

Unfortunately, she hardly got to be impressed by the work that had clearly gone into creating the retreat before they were exiting it through an arch in the surrounding walls.

A Bullbo, which she recognized as Mahana's by its saddle, was waiting outside. Mahana jumped onto it in a nimble movement incongruous with her size, landing as far up on the saddle as possible.

"Get behind me. We don't have time to chase down separate mounts for you," she said, nearly shouting.

Not even allowing her the chance to attempt to get on by herself, Link lifted Vanna up. As soon as Link was settled behind her, the Bullbo took off. She expected it to run slower than usual, but it didn't seem held back whatsoever by all the extra weight it was carrying.

If there was one good thing about being so thoroughly sandwiched between Mahana and Link, aside from the obvious, it was the warmth that came with it. The outfit Mahana had put her in wasn't any help against the cold of the night.

Vanna tilted her head out enough to see past Mahana. The town already looked fairly close to them, though she wasn't sure just how close given what Mahana had previously said about appearances being deceptive in the desert. Regardless, she didn't think it would take too long to get there. While she guessed that fact would bring relief to Mahana, it brought worry to her, because she was reminded that males were prohibited from the town. She couldn't imagine herself fighting a swarm of monsters without Link, not after what had happened the time she had tried to fight off just one Lizalfos on her own.

"Mahana, I know you said that males aren't allowed in the town under any circumstances, but can there be an exception so Link can come in to help fight the Bulblins off?" she asked.

"The Bulblins aren't in the town anymore. They already went back to their encampment."

"Really?" Link said. "Then... Why do we have to go fight them now if they already backed off? We were kinda trying to get some sleep..."

"Because they kidnapped girls from the town and your sleep is not more important than my little sister!"

Her words weren't even directed at Vanna, yet she still cringed back from them. The sound of her yelling should have been enough to scare the Bulblins away from the town forever.

"Sorry," Link muttered. "I didn't know..."

Mahana sighed. "I'm sorry for yelling at you. I'm just so  _angry_. The raid happened hours ago and nobody thought to tell me until  _now_  that my sister was kidnapped! And plenty of our soldiers went off after them and got themselves injured, and..." She let out a noise halfway between a groan and a growl. "We're the only ones who can save the girls now. And it's going to start with you, Vanna."

" _Me?_ " she said.

"Their encampment is heavily guarded. There will be plenty of Bulblins either on watchtowers or patrolling, and if they catch us, they'll call for reinforcements to come attack us. As weak as individual Bulblins are, they have strength in their numbers, and the three of us can't hope to fight off all the reinforcements. You're going to take out the guards with your arrows so we can slip in unnoticed."

Vanna suddenly regretted not saying anything back when Link had told Mahana that she was a good archer. Their mission was riding on competence that she barely had.

It was about ten minutes before they passed up the walled town, and another five or so before they stopped and got down behind a rock for cover. They were closer to the Bulblin territory than Vanna felt comfortable being, within a hundred feet of some of their shoddily constructed watchtowers. She could count eight towers from where they were, though it appeared that only two were occupied, and around ten Bulblins were lounging around a campfire.

As close as they were, though, she was concerned that they weren't close enough for her to shoot down the guards. The bow might have had a great range, but that range would mean nothing if she couldn't get a good aim on the Bulblins. The ones around the campfire were easy to see from the light of the fire, but she could only scarcely make out the ones up on the towers if their glowing red eyes weren't facing them.

"It's so dark... Did they really have to attack at nighttime?" she said, keeping her voice quiet.

"It's a good thing for you that they did. They can detect movement easily in the dark, but that aside, their night vision isn't great. As long as you stay mostly still while shooting, they shouldn't be able to see you from here," Mahana said.

It was good to know that they likely wouldn't be able to see her, but that didn't exactly solve the problem of  _her_  not being able to see  _them_. "And you want me to take out  _all_  of them?"

"If you can, but it'd be best to start with the guards on the towers. They're the ones that'll call for backup if they notice you."

So the hardest shots were the most necessary. Of course.

She stood up and carefully readied her bow and arrow, positioning herself the way the Hero's Shade had taught her, and focused her aim on the nearest guard. Her heart sped up when it turned to face her. Its eyes seemed to bore into her, and she could have sworn she'd already been caught. She held as still as possible, holding her breath and hoping that it would look away.

Vanna sighed in relief when it finally did turn. She wasn't going to wait for it to look her way again, so she loosed her arrow before it could. To her surprise, she managed to hit it and send it falling off its tower. The Bulblins around the campfire all jumped up as its body hit the ground and exploded away. She crouched back down behind the rock in case any of them would look for what had killed it.

"Got one of the guards," she whispered.

"Good. Now get back up there and kill the other," Mahana said.

Vanna slowly stood up. The Bulblins by the campfire had settled back down and none appeared to be looking her way.

It took her a moment to locate the second guard. Because it was farther away from the campfire than the other one had been, it was harder to see, and both of those things made it harder to shoot. Three arrows later, it was down, and she crouched down as well.

"You only have the ones around the fire left now?" Link asked. She nodded, and he started combing through one of his pouches. "I've got an idea..." His hands came back around with a bomb, and he smiled.

"...You are out of your mind if you think I'm running up there and throwing a bomb at them," she said.

"That wasn't what I was thinking of. Give me an arrow."

She was suspicious, but she handed him an arrow anyway. He put the bomb in his lap upside down and poked the arrow through a slim hole in the bottom. Once the arrowhead was fully inside, he turned the arrow until there was a small click.

"Barnes makes his bombs attachable to arrows," he explained, holding up the finished combined item by the arrow shaft. "Just light the fuse and shoot, and the bomb will explode wherever it lands. It could take out all those Bulblins left over in one go."

"We should have gotten bombs earlier," she said, annoyed that they had been missing out. "But... How am I supposed to light the fuse? I don't have any..." Vanna trailed off as it struck her that she didn't need a match.

"Shooting it into their fire could set it off," Mahana suggested.

" _Or_ , you could light it for me with your magic," Vanna said to Link.

Mahana raised an eyebrow at him. "You're a magician?"

"Not a proficient one, but I can do it," Link said. "The fuse is short, though, so you oughta get your aim all ready to go before I light it so you don't accidentally blow us up."

Vanna nodded and got up. Once she thought her aim was sufficient, she told Link she was ready. He stood up next to her, brought his finger to the fuse, and created a small flame. With the fuse lit, he quickly retracted his arm, and she let the bomb arrow fly. A breeze at the last second altered its trajectory, making it land farther to the left than she wanted. The resulting explosion took out all but two of the rightmost Bulblins.

"Did you get them?" Mahana asked.

"I missed two," Vanna answered.

"Good enough. I can handle those," Mahana said as she stood. "One of you ride my Bullbo up behind me. Looks like we'll be needing him."

Mahana jumped over the rock and started to race toward the Bulblins while Link hopped up on her Bullbo. Vanna jogged next to Link after he had nudged the Bullbo into a slow stride, letting Mahana get ahead. By the time they caught up to her, both the Bulblins had been dispatched, and she was sheathing her dual scimitars. Vanna was impressed by how easily Mahana had killed them—though not surprised, given how small they were in comparison to her—but it simultaneously unnerved her. If Mahana found it that easy to take down just two of them, yet she didn't think they could handle all the Bulblins in the encampment, just how many  _were_  there?

"The camp is past the gates they have up ahead," Mahana said, walking over to the back of her Bullbo that Link was still on. "And the easiest way to get past these gates would be to knock them down, so..."

Mahana drew her hand back and smacked the Bullbo on the ass, and it squealed and reared. Link screamed as the Bullbo took off running at full speed. He was able to stay on the animal somehow, though only just barely, flopping around on its saddle even as it crashed through the wooden gates. Vanna felt guilty for the laugh that escaped her at the sight, but that amusement turned into concern when the Bullbo ran directly into the steep side of a hill with a loud thunk. Link was flung off from the impact and landed a yard away from the Bullbo on rocky ground while it toppled to the sand.

"Link!" Vanna yelled.

She ran to him, leaving behind a heartily laughing Mahana, and fell to her knees next to him. His face was contorted in pain and he was curled up on his side, arms clutching his midsection.

"Did you break something?!" she asked.

"No," he grunted. He slowly rolled over to his back and draped an arm over his face. "But— _ugh_ —I don't think I can have kids anymore..."

It took a second for what he said to kick in, and then she laughed. If he was able to joke like that, he was probably okay. "...Then I guess we're in the same boat. Adoption it is."

He huffed out a laugh, his pained expression softening into a small grin. "Sorry, that was rude to say around you..."

"It wasn't, really." She decided not to tell him that she actually  _liked_  that he hadn't been considerate of her inability to have kids before he spoke, that he forgot about it until she brought it up. It meant he saw her as he saw anyone else.

Mahana made it up to them, still chuckling every few seconds. She made an attempt to contain herself further as she asked, "Are you hurt?"

"'m fine," Link said. With a groan, he pushed himself up on his elbows. Vanna didn't notice until then that the right side of his face was scuffed up.

"Sorry for laughing at your pain, but that was the best mood lightener I've witnessed in years. Why didn't you just  _let go_ , you moron?" she said through the remainder of her laughter.

He shrugged, and then groaned again and scrunched his face up.

Vanna frowned. "You  _are_  hurt."

"Only a little... I landed on my right shoulder. It kinda hurts to move it," he said, reaching up and rubbing it with his left hand.

"Well, you better have a potion or you better be adept at using your sword left-handed," Mahana said.

He shot a quick glare up at her. "I'm left-handed."

"Your idiocy shouldn't impede our progress, then. Let's go."

* * *

For the most part, sneaking through the Bulblin encampment couldn't have gone better.

Being in charge of shooting down any guards meant that Vanna had to take the lead, and though her heart felt like it was going to beat out of her chest the entire time, she got them deep into the encampment without any trouble. There were two times when she was spotted by patrolling Bulblins, but she was able to take them down before they could do anything.

It was only right at the end, right when they were searching for a key so that they could get inside the wooden structure that they'd heard the kidnapped girls inside of, that things went wrong.

Knowing they were nearing the end, Mahana became less conscious of her towering height, and she had taken a step forward from beside a tall wall to where the top of the wall was broken off, revealing her head to the final guard Vanna hadn't taken down yet. A horn blared, and countless Bulblins screeched in response. Vanna couldn't see them from where she was, but the sound of their voices and all the sand being kicked up by their feet told her that they were coming, fast.

Vanna yelped as she felt a pair of hands roughly grab her hips from behind and lift her up. "What are you—?!"

"Get on top of the wall!" Mahana yelled. "You'll be safe up there!"

Vanna lifted her legs up and planted her feet on the jagged top of the wall, and nearly toppled over when Mahana let her go. From her vantage point, she could see the horde of Bulblins pouring out of a gate and rushing toward them. There were even more than she'd thought there would be.

Slowly, being exceedingly cautious to not lose her balance, she stood up from the crouch she'd been in. She had to look away when Link and Mahana ran around in front of the wall and clashed with the Bulblins. Link had thought to slip on his chain mail before they'd entered the camp, but Mahana's only armor was on her calves and forearms, leaving her vital organs vulnerable, and she didn't even have a shield. Vanna couldn't bear to watch what had to be coming for her.

Vanna attempted to get herself in shooting position to the best of her ability with what little leg room she had, and she shot at the guard that had called in all the reinforcements. Her attention turned to the horde once it was down. Because there were so many Bulblins, it was basically impossible to miss a shot, at least, though she had to be careful to not accidentally shoot Link or Mahana.

It seemed like they'd hardly put a dent in the Bulblins even when she was nearly out of arrows. With only three more in her quiver to spare, she got an idea that she was mad at herself for not thinking of earlier. She knew her plan would work wonders for them if she could only get it to fruition in the first place.

"Link!" she yelled. She feared the distraction would cause him to let his guard down and get hurt, but this was their only chance. "Throw your pouch to me!"

He glanced up at her between swings, brows furrowed. "I'm kind of busy here!"

"Just get behind your shield and do it! It's important!"

He groaned. "Which one? I have two!"

"Whichever one you put the bombs in!"

He sheathed his sword, holding his shield out in front of him. He reached behind him and fumbled trying to get it off while attentively ensuring all blows landed on his shield instead of him. Vanna put her bow over her shoulder so both her hands would be free.

"Catch!" he said, throwing it up to her.

Vanna opened his pouch and reached inside, feeling around for the bombs. The search became easier when Link yelled up that they were in a bag, which she promptly found and pulled out. She sat his pouch and the bag down on the wall and got out one of the bombs. Once the bomb was attached to the arrow, she aimed it toward a fire that a Bullbo was being cooked over, and she let it go. The blast was, quite literally, deafening. She could hear nothing but white noise as Bulblins were sent flying in flames.

Only about fifteen Bulblins were left after the explosion. Though the battle wasn't over yet, relief was almost palpable in the air. Fifteen was doable.

She used her last arrows to shoot two of them, and Link and Mahana split the rest between themselves. What tension remained melted away when Link sliced down the final Bulblin. Vanna's hearing came back on just as it exploded away, and the first thing she heard was Mahana sighing heavily.

"I'm sorry for getting us caught. I should have been more cautious..." Mahana said.

She looked down at herself, and Vanna looked her over as well. Blood was seeping out of cuts along her arms and torso, though most of them looked to be superficial. Link, on the other hand, had fewer cuts overall—only two that Vanna could see on his left arm—but both looked to be bleeding more than all of Mahana's combined.

Mahana clapped Link on his right shoulder, making him wince. "For a puny boy like yourself, you did a great job." She walked over to Vanna and looked up with a smile on her face. "And I can't thank you enough for bombing all those Bulbins even when they should have been my responsibility."

"And I can't thank you enough for putting me up on this wall where none of them could get me," Vanna said, smiling back at her. "But, um... Can you help me get down?"

Mahana laughed and held her arms up. Vanna deliberated on ways to go about getting into her arms that didn't involve jumping, and settled on just sitting down so Mahana could reach her sides. When she was back on the ground, she brought Link's pouch over to him and wrapped his arm while Mahana went to search for the key they needed.

Mahana came back to them with a key in one hand and a bunch of arrows in the other as Vanna was finishing securing Link's bandage. "Here. You'll need these," she said, holding the arrows out to her. "Now let's go get the girls."

"Do you want me to bandage your cuts?" Vanna asked as she stashed the arrows in her quiver.

Mahana started off back toward the ramshackle structure the girls were being kept in. "It can wait."

Vanna would have responded that blood loss doesn't care about whether you think it can wait or not, but Mahana's long legs had already brought her right up to the locked doors. Link and Vanna made it to her as she pushed the doors open. Sitting along one of the walls in the dark room across from a Bullbo were the girls.

"Kira!" Mahana called, running in.

Link and Vanna followed her inside, though Vanna stayed closer to the doors where more light was able to come through the gaps in the planks of the doors and walls. Though it was dark, it was clear to see that the girls all looked quite similar despite their variety of ages, but more important than their similar appearances was the shared terrified expression on all of their faces. Even Kira, decidedly the oldest girl of the bunch, still looked scared as Mahana dropped down to her knees and pulled her into a hug.

"Mahana," she started, voice warbling.

"I never should have left you in the town alone knowing—"

" _Mahana_."

"—that they could do something like this."

Kira gasped as her wide eyes fell on Link. "Watch out!"

Out of the pitch black corner of the room, a Bulblin appeared wielding a giant axe. It was one Vanna had seen before—the behemoth one that had ridden into Kakariko Village and ran off with a gravely injured Colin.

Link was only half turned toward the Bulblin when he swung his axe, hitting Link and throwing his body across the room. The girls let out shrill screams as Link almost hit them, and a toddler started to wail.

Mahana jumped to her feet, swords at the ready. "Vanna, Kira, get the girls out of here! I'll take care of him!"

Vanna wanted to stay, to help—it felt wrong to leave Mahana to fend for herself when she was injured and Vanna was fine—but before she could protest, Kira was shoving the crying toddler into her arms and several of the smaller girls were already crowding around her legs and clutching at her pants. With the Bulblin angry, roaring, trying to get past Mahana to the girls, it seemed she didn't have much of a choice but to take them and go. She took one last look at Link, crumpled on the ground, and then they ran.

They didn't get too far away from the building before they stopped to wait for Mahana and Link to join them. Vanna would have led the girls all the way out of the encampment in case the Bulblin got out, but Kira insisted on staying close enough to hear how Mahana was doing in there. To calm her fears of the Bulblin getting out, Vanna reattached the padlock on the doors again. It seemed like he could break right through the building with his axe if he wanted to, lock or no lock, but the extra precaution couldn't hurt.

With the exception of the young ones Kira and Vanna were holding, they all stayed standing, ready to run farther away if need be. Despite some of the girls appearing to be in their early teens at the latest, Vanna was still shorter than a number of them, particularly Kira. Only the very young girls looked like normal kids to her, ignoring their golden eyes and abnormally red hair.

As the minutes passed without any sign of either Mahana or the Bulblin winning or losing, the toddler continued to sob uncontrollably in Vanna's arms while the other girls whispered among themselves. The only word that she could make out from any of their conversations was  _Mahana_ , the rest being from an unrecognizable language.

A gurgling roar and a thump from inside the building quieted everyone. A few seconds later, it sounded like the gate on the opposite side of the building slammed shut.

And then, in almost the blink of an eye, the building went up in flames.

Vanna nearly dropped the toddler into another girl's arms and ran up to the double doors, the only part of the building that had yet to catch fire. Behind her, some of the girls yelled, telling her to stay away.

"Link and Mahana are still in there  _and I locked them inside!_ " she yelled back.

It was only as she got up to the lock that she realized she didn't have the key. She pulled at the lock anyway, hoping it would give. She could see Mahana come up to the other side of the door through the gaps.

"Where'd you put the key?!" Vanna said.

"You need to move! I'm getting us out!" Mahana said.

"But—!"

" _Move!_ "

Vanna gave in and backed out of the way. She heard a Bullbo squeal, and then boards of the doors exploded outward as it rammed its way right through them. It was still running, knocking down gates that blocked the way to the Arbiter's Grounds, when Mahana ran out of the hole it created with Link slung over her shoulder.

She brought him over near the girls and laid him down on the sand. Vanna sat down next to her at Link's unconscious side while she dug through her pouch.

"Was hoping I could save this for the prison," Mahana said.

When Vanna saw the top of the glass bottle she was pulling out of her pouch, she assumed there would be a potion inside of it, but she was wrong. There was no liquid in the bottle, but rather a glowing ball of pink light with insect-like wings.

"Is that ... a Fairy...?" she asked.

"Clearly." Mahana opened the bottle, and the little Fairy floated up out of it. "Heal him," she instructed, pointing at Link.

The Fairy fluttered over to Link. Outside of the bottle, it was more clear that she wasn't just a glowing orb with wings. Vanna saw a tiny body encompassed by the radiant pink light. She held out a little wand and flew over Link's body, flicking her wrist and sending sparkles at him from her wand. Link's brows drew together and a quiet groan escaped him. Slowly, his eyes blinked open.

A tinkling bell sound came from the Fairy, and she flew over to Mahana. Mahana told her that she was okay, but the Fairy flicked her wand at her regardless. Vanna peeked over from Link to see the blood trickling from Mahana's wounds come to a stop as her skin grew back together. The Fairy gave off one final tinkling noise before zooming off into the night.

"Wow," Link whispered. He sat up and stretched himself out. "I've never been healed by a Fairy before."

"It's amazing, isn't it?" Mahana said. "I'll have to go get more before we go inside the Arbiter's Grounds. But first... We need to get you girls home."

"You're really going inside the Arbiter's Grounds?" Kira asked, frowning. "Can't I help?"

Mahana stood up along with Link and Vanna. "Your help isn't needed, Kira. I'm taking these two with me. I know they look like they couldn't stand a chance against flies, but they helped me break in here and fight the Bulblins to save you. This boy swings a sword like you wouldn't  _believe_ , and—"

"You really helped save me?" Kira interrupted, clasping her hands in front of her chest and smiling down at Link.

Mahana didn't let Link answer, saying a monotone, disapproving, "Kira."

Kira pouted. "I was just going to thank him!"

"You should be thanking all three of us, not just him. Now come on, girls. It's way past some of your bedtimes. Link, Vanna, you can go up by the prison and wait for me to come back."

Mahana scooped up two of the young girls in her arms and went to make her leave. The other girls followed behind her with the exception of Kira, who glanced back and forth from Link to the leaving group. Quickly, she grabbed his face in her hands, bent down, and pressed her lips to his.

Vanna wouldn't have been surprised if she spontaneously combusted just like the building.

Kira pulled away giggling, and after giving him a coy smile and wave, she ran off to join the group. Link gawked after her with a goofy smile, wide-eyed, cheeks flushed, mouth red from her lipstick.

He cleared his throat and looked at Vanna, trying to hold back his grin. "So," he said, voice a higher pitch than normal, "uh, let's go wait up there...?"

Vanna simply nodded, clenching her fists and hoping he couldn't see the raging jealousy on her face. They walked down the path to the Arbiter's Grounds, Link with his head down, and Vanna looking over at him every few seconds. He was smiling all the way there.

She couldn't blame him for his reaction—Kira was a very beautiful, fit, scantily clad girl. Vanna wouldn't have even been mad if Kira had kissed her instead. It was perfectly understandable for him to be all smiles, especially considering that he'd likely never kissed anyone.

Still...

Once they were sitting down at the bottom of the stairs that went up to the Arbiter's Grounds, the flames of jealousy had mostly flickered away. Vanna was left more jealous of Kira's boldness than anything.

Midna rose from her shadow and plopped herself down on the sand across from them. If she noticed anything off about them, she said nothing of it. "Looks like we're finally here... There's something I want to tell you two before we go in." She took in a deep breath and brought her eyes to Vanna. "But you're not as caught up as Link is. Remember how a few weeks ago he told you about the Triforce and its long history?"

Vanna wondered what Midna of all people had to do with the Triforce. "Yeah?"

She looked down at her lap. "Well... He skipped over some information you should know. The Triforce is from the Sacred Realm, and long ago, magic wielders using the power of the Fused Shadows attempted to take the Triforce for themselves so they could rule the Sacred Realm..." Her hands balled up into fists in the sand. "And they were banished. They were chased across Hyrule and driven into another realm by the Goddesses. It was another world entirely... The antithesis of Hyrule, where the sun shines bright."

Her hold on the sand loosened, and she grinned ruefully as she described the other world, the Twilight Realm, in poetic detail. The way she spoke of twilight and shadows made the dots connect in Vanna's head, and she had already inferred where this was going before Midna confirmed her unspoken guess.

"This is the history of the Twili as it has been passed down from our ancestors... Do you now understand what I am?" Midna's voice went from being uncharacteristically gentle to surprisingly terrifying as she shot up into the air and snarled at them. "I'm a descendant of the tribe that was banished to the Twilight Realm!"

Vanna stared up at her in stunned silence, thinking she should say something but having no idea what she could say that wouldn't upset Midna further. Midna simmered down slowly over a minute and let herself fall back down to the ground. She looked any direction other than their way.

She sighed heavily. "The Twilight Realm was a peaceful place ... until Zant took control and transformed all of the Twili into Shadow Beasts. He somehow gained a great evil power previously unknown to our tribe... In any case, I was sent away, and he thought I could no longer get into the Twilight Realm without his power. ...But he's wrong. A tale told by my people says that though the Goddesses forbade us to return to the world of light, they left one link between the light and the darkness: the Mirror of..."

Midna's eyes trailed up above Link and Vanna suddenly and narrowed. Following footsteps from behind them, a voice carried to Vanna's ears. It was a simple, chipper, "Hey, guys," and it sent her heart racing. She turned her head as if she needed to see it to believe it.

"What a  _coincidence_  to see you here!" Zi said from the top of the stairs.


	29. Confrontation

Vanna and Link both shot up off the stairs, and Link pushed her behind him. Zi smiled and started walking down the stairs.

"Calm down, Link. There's no need to play hero," he said. "And holy  _shit_ , Midna, you're a lot freakier in real life."

Midna floated next to Link in front of Vanna and put her hands on her hips. "You're  _not_  leaving with her. We've got stuff to do here, so get out of our way or I'll make you."

"I'm not here to take her. Not right now."

"If you're not here to take me, then why have you been trying to track me down?" Vanna asked.

"Am I not allowed to try to spend time with my best friend?" he said.

Vanna glared up at him as he approached the bottom of the stairs. "Why would  _I_  want to spend time with someone who wants me dead?"

He sighed. "I don't want you dead."

"Then don't take me back!" Vanna said. He started to talk, but she cut him off. "Don't you  _dare_  try to say that you don't have a choice because your dad will disown you or whatever if you don't take me back. You  _do_  have a choice. You'd just rather get to live the rest of your life comfortably than save mine."

"Because  _I can't save yours anyway_. When I went back to my dad and talked to him after I last ran into you, he was  _pissed_  that you ran away. He made his own NEVA so he can come get you if I can't bring you back by myself. You're dying whether I do anything or not, and I want to make this easier for both of us."

Link took a step closer to Zi. "Neither of you are takin' her back."

"Ooh, he can talk," Zi said. "Why don't you be the mute you're supposed to be and stay out of this?"

"Stay out of her life," Link said slowly.

"Don't you have a skeleton to go stab or something, short shit?"

" _You're_  the only skeleton he'll be stabbing if you try anything," Midna said.

Vanna's heart started to race faster. When Link said he would protect her from Zi, she hadn't imagined  _how_  he would protect her. Despite her ever-increasing resentment toward Zi, she was horrified at the thought of Link stabbing him,  _killing_  him. Zi didn't deserve to  _die_  because of his misguided loyalty to his dad, and she couldn't imagine putting his sweet mother through the pain of losing her only child.

"You can't kill him!" she shouted.

Link didn't look back at her as he responded. "I would never kill another human, and I don't wanna hurt one either, but if I gotta hurt him to save your life, I'll do it."

"Good news that I'm not trying anything then, as I said," Zi said, words too cheerful for the conversation they were having. "Right now, I'm here to spend some time with Vanna and explore this world while I still can, 'cause when we do eventually go back, one of the NEVAs is being locked away forever and the rest are being destroyed."

" _What?_ " Vanna said. "Why does your dad keep on wanting to let his inventions go to waste? First me, now NEVA...?"

"Because you're both similar. Awe-inspiring on the surface, but with ' _incalculable hazards_ ' lurking beneath," he said, rolling his eyes. "His words, not mine. Beats me what he thinks you could do. You're like 3'6" and you weigh basically nothing. But NEVA... Look what it did to you. Dragged you into some weird alternate dimension. Imagine if it dropped someone into  _space_  or something. One malfunction could kill someone instantly, and just one person misusing it could destroy our whole universe. He says he can't with good conscience allow people to use or even know about NEVA after what happened with you, so the one he's not recycling will be sent away for safekeeping."

' _Mr. Rider wouldn't know good conscience if it slapped him in the face_ ,' she thought. "So he thinks it's better to lock it up and let nobody know that it exists? You can't just hide something like  _the first time traveling device_  from people!"

"It won't be hidden from  _everyone_. You have no idea how many discoveries are hidden from the public. NEVA won't be the first, it'll be far from the last, and it won't be nearly as important a discovery as other hidden findings have been. Only people in the government facility it's going to will be allowed to know that it ever existed."

"That makes it even worse! Of all the people to trust it with, he's giving it to the  _government?_  Who knows what they'll try to do with it?!"

"They're the ones who backed most of the funding for its creation. I think they kinda have a right to it."

"And I think Vanna has a right to  _live_ ," Link said, "but he still thinks it's okay to kill her for no reason. I don't get it. She did nothin' wrong."

"Where we come from, robots don't have rights, so—"

"She's a  _person_ ," Link said.

"I agree with you. But the rest of our world doesn't agree," Zi said. "And I don't know how much you know about technology, hillbilly, but when pieces of technology don't do things the way they're supposed to, they're considered glitched. In other words, broken. It was agreed upon by everyone who had a part in making her that she'd be shut down if she became glitched the way she did."

"But I'm not glitched! There's nothing wrong with me!" Vanna said. She took in a deep breath to try to compose herself, but it didn't help much. "I was created to act like a human and now they want to kill me because I do!"

Zi frowned. "I don't think either of us wants to believe it, but you ... really are kinda glitched, Vanna. Your reaction to being told that you're a Synthuman was the one time where you  _weren't_  supposed to act like a human, but you did. You reacting negatively goes directly against what you were programmed to do. You were supposed to stay calm and accept the truth like it was no big deal, not start crying and screaming."

She clenched her fists and narrowed her eyes at him. "Well I've accepted it now, so you can tell your dad to leave me the hell alone."

"Okay, one; no, you haven't accepted it. You're still upset about it. And two; it's too late now. It's not about whether or not you accept yourself  _now_ , it's about the fact that you didn't accept it at first when you were supposed to." Zi huffed and shivered, air coming out of his mouth in a white puff. "Look... I know you guys have to get inside this temple to continue on with your little quest to save the world, and since we all know I'm not leaving, let me come with you. I  _promise_  I won't try to run off with you right now if we can just spend a little more time together."

Midna and Link both looked back at Vanna for an answer. She gaped for a minute, trying to decide what to say. Zi's betrayal had yet to fully taint her perception of him, and somewhere deep down, she still considered him her best friend. As much as she hated it, as much as she wanted to tell him to fuck off and leave her alone, she couldn't deny that she missed him.

"I... I guess I trust he won't try to kidnap me as long as you two are next to me," she finally said.

Midna turned back to Zi and leaned closer to him. "Then you can come with us for now, but just remember that while Link might be too scared to hurt a human being unless he absolutely has to, I have no problem with zapping you to dust the second you even  _think_  about getting in the way of my plans."

Zi pushed the sleeves of his jacket up and showed off his bare arms. "I got myself a magic pouch when I was in Castle Town. Both bracelets are in there, and you'll be able to see if I reach for them." He lifted the side of his jacket then, revealing the pouch strapped to his belt and patting it. "If we've got a deal, then let's go inside already. It's way warmer in there."

"But we have a friend that's supposed to meet us out here soon," Vanna said.

"I'm sure your friend will realize you just went inside," Zi said. "Come on. I can tell you're cold in that outfit, Van. Looks nice, by the way."

Zi gave her a shit-eating grin before turning and taking the stairs two at a time. Vanna crossed her arms over her chest and followed after him. Link caught up to her at the top of the stairs, green tunic in his hands, and he held it out to her. She  _could_  have turned down his offer given that she had clothes of her own in her pouch, but she liked the idea of wearing something of his more than she probably should have.

Vanna thanked him and accepted the tunic, then put it on after stashing her bow away. The material was thick and sturdy, scratchier than she'd have liked, could have used a good wash, and it was baggy on her, but wearing it made her feel all fuzzy and warm.

They stopped at the end of the hallway leading inside and sat down against the walls, Zi across from Vanna, Link, and Midna. It was quiet and awkward with none of them saying anything. Vanna busied herself with moving her belt above Link's tunic on her waist and putting on her socks and boots, and her necklace from the Zora outfit, but after she was out of things to do, she couldn't stand the silence for long.

"So, how'd you even get all the way back here? Teleport right past the Bulblin camp?" she asked.

Zi made a noise of exasperation and smiled. "Wasn't that easy. I've had a hell of a time trying to get here over the past few days. NEVA can't teleport to places by name here, so I've had to go by distances instead, teleporting a few hundred feet at a time until I got to wherever I wanted to be. I accidentally teleported into Gerudo Town, got jailed and I might be a dad now, and then I—"

"Uh, gonna have to stop you there," she interrupted him, "you got put in  _jail_ , and..."

"Yeah, someone ought to teach the Gerudo more effective punishments for trespassing," he said. Vanna stared at him in silence, and he broke out into laughter. "Hey, they gotta have babies  _somehow_  with them never giving birth to any males of their own."

"They don't give birth to males?" she said, shocked that she'd missed out on such a fundamental trait of their race. She had  _so_  many questions to ask Mahana when she arrived.

"Well, apparently they do, but only once every hundred years or so. Anyway, I teleported out of their jail, came here, almost got killed by Bulblins, and that's basically it. I set this place as a base on NEVA so I could get back here easily, and I've been checking every now and again to see if you'd made it here. I've mostly been traveling around, and going back home to talk to my dad between checks because I can't get signal here." He pulled out his phone and unlocked it. "It just won't... Oh, so  _now_  it wants to work."

"You've got signal?"

"Yeah. It's not strong, but it's there. Maybe because I'm near your phone and your phone's been able to keep signal this whole time...?"

"My phone died about a week and a half ago."

Zi pursed his lips. "Hm."

Vanna knew him well enough to tell that he wanted to say something more, but he didn't. He put his phone back after sending a text, and then it became quiet again. The awkward silence was sporadically broken by impatient grumblings from Zi, and Link's yawns as he struggled to stay awake.

Vanna sighed when she finally heard footsteps nearing the temple. As they got closer, it became obvious that there was more than one person coming in. Before they came into view, Zi, Link, and Vanna stood, and Midna disappeared into Vanna's shadow.

It turned out to be both Mahana and Kira. Kira, spear and shield at her back, smiled at Link before her eyes landed on Zi. Her smile widened, but Mahana glared at him.

"I heard that a boy matching your description illegally entered our town yesterday and escaped from jail," Mahana said.

Zi shrugged with a convincing poker face. "Wasn't me. I'm a law-abiding citizen."

Mahana still looked suspicious of him. "Who are you?"

"This is my ... friend, Zi, and he's coming with us," Vanna answered. "Zi, this is Mahana, and..."

"I'm Kira, her little sister that annoyed her until she let me come along," Kira said, smiling and holding her hand out to Zi. "Nice to meet you! It's not often I come across boys as tall as me."

Zi smiled back at her and shook her hand. "And it's not often I come across girls as tall as me."

Kira giggled, and Mahana groaned. "You're not here to flirt with every male you see, you're here to  _help_ ," Mahana said to her.

Kira humphed and dropped Zi's hand. "Wasn't flirting," she murmured. "Shall we get started?"

It took only a few short steps for them all to exit the hallway, and they were left on a small extension of stone. The first challenge of the temple presented itself—most of the flooring in the room was gone, taken over by sinking whirlpools of sand.

Link was quick to pull out his clawshot. "We can all take turns with this latching onto that grate on the wall over there to get across this gap, and then we should be able to jump over the smaller gaps from there."

"Yeah, you all can have fun with that if you want to, but I'm not about to fall and drown in sand." Zi retrieved one of the NEVAs from his pouch and put it on. "NEVA, activate. Teleport: sixty feet forward."

In the blink of an eye, Zi disappeared from where he was and reappeared sixty feet away, past the treacherous floor and past the closed gate that blocked the hallway across the room. Vanna was the only one not shocked by his action.

"How did he  _do_  that?!" Kira asked.

"Magic!" Zi called.

" _Science_ ," Vanna said.

It was hard to tell what exactly he was doing because the gate partially obscured him, but it looked like Zi put both NEVAs on the ground in front of him. It was even harder to hear what he said because of the moving sand, but it became clear when both NEVAs appeared on the floor in front of the group.

"You can take turns getting over here with them," he hollered over.

Kira reached down and picked one up while Vanna picked up the other. Vanna handed the one she had to Mahana and instructed them both to put them on and close their eyes. They were reluctant, but they complied.

"What do we have to say to make them take us over?  _Nee-ba, activate_...?" Kira said.

"You two don't have to say anything. Just let me say it, and both bracelets will respond," Vanna said. "NEVA, activate. Teleport: sixty feet forward."

As Zi had, they both disappeared and reappeared across the room, and then Zi sent the NEVAs back over once more.

Link hesitated after grabbing one. "Vanna..." he said quietly.

"I know it looks scary, but I promise they're safe," she said.

"No, that's not..." Link shook his head and looked at her with a frown. "You've been going along with us in hopes that Midna will be able to get your bracelet back so you can have the chance to leave and be safe. But you have one right now..."

"Oh."

She could leave.

It would take just one short prompt spoken quietly so Zi couldn't hear where she was headed to. She could go back to her world, sometime in the past or future, and live out her life without having to worry about Zi or Mr. Rider ever again.

And without ever again seeing Link, or the Hero's Shade, or Uli, Rusl, Fado, Beth, Talo, Malo, Luda, Renado, Mahana, Zoras, Fairies, Light Spirits, or even Ilia or Midna...

"I'm not leaving."

Link's brows raised. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure," Vanna said with a reassuring smile. "Zi might be a pain, but I don't think he's so much of a pain that it justifies taking such a drastic measure to get away from him. Not yet, at least. Do you  _want_  to get rid of me?"

"No, no! I just ... want you to be safe," he said innocently.

"Can you guys, like, hurry up?" Zi shouted.

Vanna finished strapping her bracelet on and gave Link a look that told him to finish putting his on, too. Once he did, she closed her eyes and commanded the NEVAs to teleport them forward. The second they were finished teleporting over, she removed her bracelet; as long as she had it on and it was close enough to pick up Zi's voice, he could make it take her right to America, right to his dad.

Zi took both NEVAs back and stuffed them into his pouch before they started up a staircase with him and Kira taking the lead. If the question Kira asked him involving how his dad was a warlock was any indication, it seemed that Zi had given her a sensationalized explanation of NEVA during what little time they were across the gate and Link and Vanna weren't. Vanna would have told her the truth were it not so amusing to hear Zi's embellishments.

"...He's just always kinda had a knack for inventing spells, and—what?" Zi stopped in his tracks at the top of the stairs. "This ... is wrong."

"What do you mean?" Kira asked.

"That vat of oil is supposed to be in a little room off to the side, and there's supposed to be another little room off to the other side with the key to the door in it," he said.

"How do you know how this prison is  _supposed_  to be laid out?" Mahana asked.

"...I have foresight? But... A lot of reality doesn't line up with what I foresee," Zi said.

"So you're the son of a powerful warlock and yet you're just a bad fortuneteller. Tough luck." Mahana pushed her way between Kira and Zi to continue farther into the room. She spotted and grabbed the key to the locked door sitting at the base of a column in the corner and looked back at Zi with a smug grin. "Looks like it really wasn't in a room off to the side after all."

"The corner's close enough," Zi grumbled. "Link, if you've got a lantern, you should fill it up with that oil before we go on. The next room is really dark and we'll need to see so we don't get eaten by quicksand or stabbed by little skeletons."

Vanna ended up refilling her lantern with oil as well, though she doubted that they would need two separate lanterns what with her having a glowing necklace and Zi having a flashlight on his phone. As Zi ' _foretold_ ,' the following room would have been exceptionally dark were it not for their lanterns and Vanna's necklace. Two sconces were beside the door they came in through, and a single sconce was above the door on the opposite side of the room, though all of their flames gave little light.

"There are supposed to be Stalchildren in here, you say?" Mahana said.

"I  _swear_  they're in here," Zi said. "We have to light the torches over there, and they're going to pop up on the way over..."

He snatched the lantern from Vanna's hand and ventured forth, holding the lantern out in whichever direction he wanted to look in. Right when he turned his back on a patch of sand, it shifted as if a burrowed Moldorm was about to jump out. Instead, six tiny skeletal creatures came out of the sand wielding spears.

Vanna hadn't thought they would be too frightening, but they were. It was one thing to imagine them, and another to  _see_  animated skeletons walking around with your own eyes. Their childlike proportions did nothing to make them less creepy. If anything, that made it worse, because she couldn't help but wonder if they were once living children that wound up imprisoned among the worst criminals Hyrule had.

"They're behind you!" Kira shouted.

Kira's warning reached Zi too late; one of them jabbed a spear into the back of Zi's calf before he was able to turn all the way.

" _Ow_ , you little asshole!" Zi yelled.

The Stalchild almost seemed to laugh, but that laughter turned into a high-pitched shriek when one swift kick from Zi broke all its bones apart. The pieces turned to dust as they hit the ground. It was so pathetic how easily it went down that Vanna kind of felt bad for it.

Link shoved his lantern toward Vanna, and once it was out of his hand, he reached for his sword and ran with Kira to Zi's defense. Zi had suffered a few more jabs to the legs before they made it to him, but he had also managed to kick two more of the remaining Stalchildren out of existence on his own.

"There's more where they came from," Zi said as the last one went down. He looked over at Vanna and Mahana. "Thanks for helping."

"I was busy holding this lantern," Vanna said.

"I was busy not caring about them poking you," Mahana said. "I don't think there's a weaker monster in the world than a Stalchild. Their spears are like pencils."

Zi bent over and pulled up his pants, showcasing the pinpoints on his legs with blood dripping from them in thin lines. "Look at those!"

"They're barely bleeding," Mahana said with a shrug.

"They wouldn't be bleeding at all if their spears were really like pencils!"

"You've just got thin skin. And one's about to poke you in the ass."

The laughter Vanna had been holding back came out when it did.

Zi stayed more vigilant after that, making sure to back off and let Link and Kira take care of the Stalchildren as they came on their way to the other side. He and Vanna lit the torches beside the door, and the gate blocking the door drew up into the wall.

There was a burst of chilled air when Mahana opened the door. The change in ambience from the room they left to the room they entered was like the difference between day and night. The prior rooms had been warmer with warm-colored fires to match, but this one was cool, literally and figuratively. Four blue flames were atop posts along a grand staircase, and they bathed the room in their tone. There was something strangely beautiful and eerie about it at the same time.

"So, fortuneteller," Mahana started as they came to a stop in the middle of the room, "which way will we go from here? Up the stairs and through the arch or through the doors to the right or left?"

"Any second now, some Poes are going to come through the arch and a gate's going to slam over it, so we'll have to go through one of the doors on the side to get the arch open again..." Zi smiled the kind of smile he always had when he was up to something. " _Unless_ , we teleport right past the gate. I don't think we even have to bother with going through the doors. There's nothing important back there unless Link wants to collect all the Poe souls, but we won't really need those if we're going to teleport past the gate."

"What do you mean by ' _collect all the Poe souls_ '?" Link repeated.

Zi raised an eyebrow. "Aren't you collecting Poe souls?"

Link stared at him, just as confused as he was. "Why would I be collecting  _souls?_ "

"Because you're supposed to collect Poe souls to save Jovani...?"

"I've never come across a Poe or a Jovani in my life..."

"...You know, Zi, you're doing a good job affirming my suspicion that you're the worst fortuneteller ever," Mahana said. "I hear there's an actually competent one in Castle Town. You should see if she'll mentor you."

Zi crossed his arms. "Look, I'll admit I might have  _some_  details a little wrong, but if you think I'm  _entirely_  full of shit, then go try to walk through the arch."

Mahana smiled. "Gladly."

She headed for the arch, and it was as she placed a foot on the stairs that part of Zi's prediction first came true. Mahana paused as four lanterns floated out of the arch. Each lantern went to a blue flame, and one by one they swirled around them, stealing the fire from the posts and glowing blue with it themselves. When all four were lit, they circled above the posts in unison, and then a gate slammed down in the archway.

"Okay, so you have about a 30% accuracy rate," Mahana said.

"It's at  _least_  90%!" Zi said.

The four lanterns came over to where Vanna, Link, Kira, and Zi were all standing close together, and they moved in a circle around them. Link and Kira got out their weapons, and Vanna handed Zi her lantern so she could get her bow and arrows ready. Three of them suddenly dispersed, leaving only one floating between them and Mahana. Vanna would have tried to shoot at the Poe, but she worried that because it was invisible, her arrow would go right through it and hit Mahana instead. Kira thrust her spear at it, yet her attack only made the lantern swing in place.

Zi grabbed Vanna and Kira and yanked them backward. "You can see it and attack it as a dog, Link! Go beast mode and get it!"

Mahana and Kira simultaneously made comments expressing bewilderment at Zi's statement, and Link took turns looking at each of them. "I haven't told either of you, but, um, yeah, I can turn into a wolf...?" he said. "Midna, transform me!"

Midna's arm extended from Vanna's shadow holding the embodiment of Zant's curse and she flung it at Link. On contact, he began to transform. Even with the heads-up, both Mahana and Kira were astounded, and so were Zi and Vanna to a lesser extent. The bizarreness of it never fully went away to Vanna, and she was sure it was more bizarre to Zi getting to see it in person for the first time.

With a growl, Link lunged at the Poe. When he landed on it, it looked like he was floating in the middle of the air, and it looked like he was biting at nothing when he began to maul it. He was thrown off a few times, but each time he got back up until he was able to bring the Poe down.

A long, ragged white robe with a blue hood materialized on the ground next to Link, and what looked like steam escaped its holes as it deflated. The lantern fell beside it and shattered, freeing the blue fire from within. The flame floated its way back over to its place atop one of the posts.

"...You weren't kidding. You really turned into a dog," Mahana said flatly.

Link barked three times, and then was transformed back into a human. "Why does everyone say I'm a dog when I'm a wolf?"

"Same difference," Zi said. "So. As I was saying—"

"Link just turned into  _a dog_ ," Mahana cut in, eyes widening.

"Wolf," Link corrected.

Mahana threw her hands up in the air. "Dog, wolf, whatever!  _How?_  How could someone as amateur at magic as you do that? And what was that ' _Midna_ ' thing about?"

"And what about that little orange and black thing?" Kira asked.

"The short of it is, it's not really my own magic that makes me transform. It comes from the orange and black crystal you saw, which was thrown at me and taken out of me by my friend, Midna," Link calmly explained.

" _What_  friend Midna?" Mahana asked. "I see me, you, Kira, Zi, and Vanna here, and that's it."

"Or can only  _you_  see her, when you're a dog?" Kira asked.

Link turned from Mahana to Vanna's direction, and he looked down at her feet. "She's visible to humans, but she prefers to hide in shadows when anyone other than me or Vanna are around. Do you want to come out, Midna?"

"No," came Midna's curt, disembodied voice.

"Just introduce yourself real quick, and you can go back into Vanna's shadow when you're done," Link said.

Midna groaned before coming out of Vanna's shadow. Mahana and Kira both gasped at the sight of her, and Midna crossed her arms. "My name's Midna. I'll be in Vanna's shadow, getting the crystal to and out of Link whenever he asks me to transform him. Bye."

With that, Midna dove down into Vanna's shadow. Mahana and Kira stared at it with their jaws slightly ajar.

"She doesn't like people much," Vanna said.

" _That's_  obvious," Mahana said. "So... She's just been there in your shadow?"

"Yeah."

"Wait!" Kira said. "Do you think if she threw that crystal at one of us instead of Link, we'd get to turn into dogs, too?"

"The crystal only turns Link into a dog," Midna answered from Vanna's shadow. "If it touched you, you'd turn into a spirit and be stuck without a body for the rest of eternity."

"Aw," Kira said, pouting.

Mahana let out a long breath and shook her head. "People from outside of the desert are even weirder than I thought."

Zi clapped his hands together. "Well, now that we're all over that, can I finish what I was going to say so we can get through this place already?" He didn't wait for anyone to answer. "Link would need to kill the rest of the Poes to open the gate, but since  _I'm_  here, we can just teleport right past the gate. Aside from the Poes, all that's to the doors to the sides is the compass and a lot of other monsters that I think would be better to not mess with."

"Do you even know  _why_  I wanted to come here in the first place?" Mahana asked.

"No. You weren't in my prophetic vision. Neither were any of your people at all, for that matter."

"The monsters in this prison are radiating such a powerful evil aura that it's constantly awakening monsters all around it, and those awakened monsters have been attacking my people. I'm here to rid this prison of the evils inside it once and for all to put a stop to the onslaught we've been dealing with. That means killing as many monsters as I can."

"Kay, well, you can do what you want," Zi said, shrugging. "I'm not getting my ass handed to me by a mummy, so I'll be here. You guys can go."

"...The monsters around this part of the prison actually aren't radiating too much of an evil aura," Link said, looking at Mahana. "I really have a feeling for that sorta thing, 'specially when I'm a wolf... Most of the aura is coming from deeper within the prison by only a couple of powerful monsters."

"It's probably the boss and the miniboss," Zi said.

"The boss and the miniboss?" Kira repeated.

" _God_ , you guys need to invent video games," Zi said under his breath. "Miniboss is at the halfway point through here, boss is at the end. They're the big bads of this temple."

"It really might be better to just teleport past the gate," Vanna said. "This place is supposed to be off-limits, isn't it? If Link doesn't kill the Poes, the gate will stay closed, and that would keep people from getting too far in here."

"And it would keep the monsters beyond the gate from getting out," Zi said.

" _And_  skipping over some monsters means there's less risk of us getting injured in here," Vanna finished.

Mahana pursed her lips and tapped her foot as she considered it. "...I suppose I could always come back to these rooms later on if killing the boss and miniboss doesn't make the Bulblins stop reawakening. Fine."

Zi reached down and grabbed the Poe's robe and stuffed it into his pouch. The rest of them asked him at the same time what he was doing, and he smiled. "I want a souvenir,  _duh_. Now let's go! There's something in here that I've been dying to play with."


	30. Death Traps

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone who read the last chapter within a couple days of me posting it, just thought you should know that I went back and made some alterations to the end. Basically, I changed it so that Mahana and Kira had more of a reaction to Midna transforming Link, and Link gave them a short explanation and had Midna introduce herself to them, so now they know that she's there.

It was a momentary relief to leave behind the chilled air and blue fire, to get past the gate and into a warmly-lit hallway that didn't feel like it was haunted by invisible ghosts.

But just because they were beyond the Poes didn't mean that they were past all the eeriness of the prison. The chamber at the end of the hall had its own eerie monsters, though they were at least visible, unlike Poes. Vanna remembered seeing them in Link's monster guide.

The book had called them Bubbles, but she personally would have called them just about anything else. The cutesy name didn't match the flaming, flying skulls with bat-like wings at all. As if they weren't creepy enough, she thought they were what a skeletal version of Ooccoo Jr. might look like, and she realized that she'd likely have the displeasure of looking at him again soon because he and his mother were always in temples.

To Vanna's surprise, Zi ran ahead of everyone else. She thought he'd wait for someone to kill the Bubbles first. Instead, he reached into his pouch, pulled out a laser gun similar to her own, and shot them down himself. He turned around when they were dead for good, unnecessarily blowing at the barrel of his gun before smiling proudly.

"Pretty impressive, eh?" he said.

Kira rushed up to him and enthusiastically asked what it was. While sitting down and finally taking the time to glue up the small punctures on his legs from the Stalchildren, he gave her an embellished answer much as he'd done with the rest of her questions. Vanna whispered to Link that he shouldn't believe anything Zi says about magic, to which he responded that it was obvious even with his own limited magic knowledge that Zi had no idea what he was talking about.

"So, do you think you could use your magic bracelet to get us over there past that gap?" Kira asked, pointing to one of the hallways. "I bet there's something useful in that chest."

Zi shrugged and stood up as he put the glue away. "Could, yeah, but there's not much reason to. We need to go down the opposite hallway to get something else, and going that way will lead us around to that door behind the chest."

"Are you really sure about that?" Mahana asked.

" _Yes_ , I'm absolutely sure about this," Zi said.

Mahana hummed and walked up to the wall across where they came in from, which was missing a huge chunk. "What about the room past this? Do you know what's supposed to be back there?"

"It's got this thing, but you need this other thing we're gonna get for it, and we have to go through that door and around to get the thing so we can do that thing. But on second thought... I don't even think all of us could do the thing with the thing. We'll have to figure it out when we get there."

"Great explanation," Mahana mumbled.

Vanna stepped into a cavity in the middle of the floor that had cog-shaped grooves. Other tiles of the stone floor were cut out, revealing a series of cogs beneath. "What's up with this?"

"That's for the  _thing_ ," Zi said. "If we don't have the thing, there's nothing we can do in here, so let's go get it already."

With that, they all made their way through the door, but they had to stop only a few steps into the short hall behind it. The floor ended and there was a long drop into the cylindrical room that they were near the top of. There were other holes in the wall like the one they were in every floor down, and in the middle of the room was a tall pole that stretched all the way up to where they were.

"Don't feel like breaking my legs today. Who's with me?" Zi said as he pulled out both NEVAs.

"They can bring us down?" Kira asked.

"I wouldn't have suggested using them if they couldn't," Zi said.

"But you can't be sure how far down that is... What if you tell it to take us farther down than the floor, or not down far enough? Will we appear in the floor or the air?"

"You think my dad didn't think of that? Nah. They take notice of your body and surroundings and automatically adjust where you'll land if you were about to appear inside of something or with your feet not on the ground. It can be kinda finicky if you're trying to go  _up_ , because it prioritizes bringing your feet to solid ground, so it might disregard your command if you try to tell it to bring you up and you didn't tell it to bring you up high enough. But in this case, it'll recognize that there's no floor a foot ahead of me where I'll tell it to bring me, so instead of bringing me a foot forward into the air where I'll just drop, it'll bring me down to the nearest floor a foot ahead of me, which is down there."

"...So, you're saying it's safe," Kira said slowly.

"It's safe." Zi looked down over the edge. "But, actually, if you want me to... This floor can be moved up and down by pushing that lever around the pole. I could go down there and move it up here if you'd rather not have to teleport."

"I think I'd like if you did that," Kira said in a small voice.

Zi turned to Vanna and held out one of the NEVAs. "Well, you know it's safe. Wanna go with me?"

Were Mahana and Kira not standing right there, Vanna would have told him that he wasn't as clever as he thought and she wasn't going to fall for his trap. There was no way she would willingly put on a NEVA around him when he could tell it where to bring her. "Thanks, but no thanks."

He stared at her in silence for a moment, and she knew he knew what she was thinking. "I can disable voice control on yours so you can input the command yourself."

And then she'd be trapped down there all alone with him. "I'll pass."

He sighed and looked from Link to Mahana. "Either of you wanna come with me? It'd be helpful to have someone lend a hand with getting the floor up here."

Mahana made a face that gave her answer for her.

"I'll go," Link said.

Even though he was the one who asked in the first place, Zi was shocked that Link agreed. So was Vanna. It seemed like Link disliked Zi even more than she did.

Seeing them down there side by side—a symbol of her old life and her new one crossing paths—was uncanny and dreamlike. She couldn't keep herself from attempting to be nosy, and she was disappointed to realize that she couldn't tell what they were saying. She sat on the edge with her lower legs dangling off, hoping that being just a bit closer to them would help her distinguish their words, but it didn't.

Mahana sat down next to her. "That Zi boy isn't really your friend, is he?"

She shrugged. "It's complicated."

"Ah. What you're saying is, in shorter terms, no."

Vanna looked down at her lap as she toyed with the corners of Link's tunic. "What I'm saying is, it's complicated." She shrugged again, and before Mahana could potentially probe for more, she changed the topic. "So, you Gerudos don't give birth to males?"

While Link and Zi took their sweet time getting up to them, stopping and checking in every hole in the wall, Mahana tried to explain to Vanna just how Gerudo propagation worked. She said that the overwhelming majority of male Gerudo fetuses were simply incompatible with life, leading to half of Gerudo pregnancies being miscarriages and the other half being females. It was apparently typical that every hundred years a Gerudo would become pregnant with a viable male who would become king, yet they hadn't had a living male in almost 130 years. Since there was never a selection of their own males to mate with, most Gerudo women had children with Hylian men, and the traditional Gerudo appearance was so dominant that children hardly inherited looks from their Hylian fathers.

She also told Vanna about her and Kira's parents—their Gerudo warrior mother and Hylian ex-soldier father from Castle Town—and how they were out traveling, in spite of the less-than-ideal state of the country, now that she and Kira were old enough to live on their own in Gerudo Town. She guessed that they would be back soon, though, after she sent them a letter about the desert's Bulblin infestation. Kira piped in to talk about all the places their parents visited and how she wanted to go to them, too. She was just finishing describing the small beach village in the far South that their parents recently went to when Link and Zi got the floor to their level.

"That took long enough," Mahana said as they joined them again.

"This thing is  _way_  harder to push than it looks like," Zi said.

Mahana locked her fingers together and pushed her arms out, cracking her knuckles. "Then let me help. We'll be down in no time."

Mahana, Zi, and Link all worked together to push the lever around the pole while Kira and Vanna stood off to the side. Even if they wanted to help, the lever wasn't big enough for them to. Still, they were down all the way in less than half the time it took for Zi and Link to bring it up.

"We don't have a key, do we?" Mahana said when she noticed the locked door they were stopped by.

Link retrieved a key from one of his pouches. "It was in one of the other holes."

Link was the one to unlock the door and the first to step through into the next room, but Zi got ahead of him and turned toward everyone after Vanna, Mahana, and Kira were inside.

"Heads up, before we go any farther," Zi said. "There are three things in here that could kill us: giant spikes, a Redead, and ghost rats."

"Ghost  _rats?_ " Vanna said.

"Yeah, ghost rats."

"Ghost rats  _that kill_."

"Okay, maybe they won't  _kill_  us, but I'll seriously vom if they touch me. Which is why I volunteer Link, our group ghost-seer, to kill them."

"I'll take care of 'em," Link said.

"And I also think that you should be able to see the giant spikes with your doggy senses, so once the rats are dead you should lead us through the room," Zi said.

"What do you think they are, ghost spikes?" Vanna said.

"I don't know. That's just how it is in my  _vision_ , which is correct, like, 95% of the time at this point."

"Where's the Redead you talked about?" Mahana asked.

"At the very end of the room, to the side with a chain we'll need to pull to get past that big slab in the middle back there," Zi answered.

"Should I go around and kill all the rats, then the Redead, and then come back to lead you guys past the spikes, or should we go together to start with and I'll kill the rats as we come across them?" Link asked.

"I think it'd be best if we all went together," Mahana said. "That way you won't have to face the Redead alone."

Kira and Vanna agreed that they should all go together, and Zi was last to reluctantly agree, though he insisted that he'd be staying behind all of them the entire time. Link had Midna transform him—eliciting shocked noises from Mahana and Kira when they noticed Midna's arm raise up out of Vanna's shadow—and then they were off with him leading the way.

Vanna wasn't sure if it was because he really could see the spikes as Zi said he would, or if there weren't any spikes at all in actuality, but either way, none came up. She did, however, have invisible rats jump up on her multiple times, and Link had to bite into them to tear them off her. Though she didn't have a phobia of rats like Zi did, she still ended up squealing like a little girl in fright every time she felt small paws dig into her.

Near the end of the room, they stopped in their tracks. Lying on the floor near a pile of nonhuman skulls was a mummified monster, clasping a gigantic wrapped sword in its hands that were crossed over its chest. It looked like Zi was wrong about two things—the first being that the monster was on the side with the chain they needed to pull, and the second being that the monster was a Redead. Again relying on what she'd learned from the monster guide, Vanna thought it had to be a Gibdo instead.

Not that the distinction mattered in that instant, really. Gibdo or Redead, she knew that she did  _not_  want to mess with it.

In lieu of barking three times, Link made three quieter vocalizations in a row. Midna asked from Vanna's shadow if that meant he wanted to transform, and after he nodded at Vanna, she said yes for him. Midna's arm appeared out of Vanna's shadow again, and the crystal shot into her hand, turning Link back into a human.

"If we stay quiet and as far away from it as possible, it might not wake up," Link whispered.

"Where's that chain you said would be over here, Zi?" Vanna whispered.

"Um... I might have misremembered and it might be on the other side," Zi whispered. "But we had to come over here anyway to get through... You can't just cut right from the other side to the hall between because spikes are in the way."

"Except we can't get through anyway because of the slab, so we have to go back," Mahana whispered.

"We don't all have to," Link whispered. "You all go ahead up to the slab, and I'll stand here and watch until you're safe over there, then I'll go back and pull the chain myself. You can pass through once I've got it out of the way, and I'll run around and meet you. Just be really, really quiet while walking over..."

Link stayed put where he was while the rest of them formed a line to pass the Gibdo. They walked slowly, trying to place their feet on the ground silently with each step. Vanna held her breath and kept her eyes glued to the monster, watching for any signs that it was going to wake.

They were close to the hall—so,  _so_  frustratingly close—when the measures they took to be quiet proved to be worthless. Appearing to sense their mere presence, the Gibdo, without bending any limbs, rose to its feet.

They all had their weapons out in a flash. Not bothering to adjust her stance or ensure her aim was accurate as she would have under better circumstances, Vanna fired an arrow. She was close enough that her aim was spot on regardless. Her arrow went through the Gibdo's head right as Kira's spear prodded its abdomen and a laser from Zi's gun hit its chest.

Even being struck by a laser, impaled by a spear, and shot in the head with an arrow did nothing to prevent it from unhinging its jaw and releasing a blood-curdling, petrifying scream.

Vanna had thought there was reason to believe that she would be impervious to its incapacitating shriek. After all, why would technology entirely freeze up from a loud noise? At most, she assumed it would make her unable to hear for some time.

But like everyone else, she froze in place. The only part of her that moved was her heart, hammering away in her chest. Everything went silent, and her vision stayed locked on the Gibdo as it drew its sword back, preparing to swing.

Midna erupted from Vanna's shadow in front of her and thrust her arms forward, sending out the same orange arcs of electricity Vanna had seen appear in her hands that very first day when she'd destroyed NEVA. Rather than making it turn to ashes as they had done to Vanna's bracelet, the arcs paralyzed it. Keeping her arms out in front of her, Midna looked back and said something, but Vanna couldn't hear most of it, and her eyes weren't focused enough on Midna's face to try to read her lips. Her hearing only came back to her in time to hear the last word, ' _it_ ,' which didn't help her deduce the rest of what Midna had said.

Vanna's desperate attempts to move came out as small spasms. Beside her, Mahana recovered her mobility, and she quickly sheathed her swords before picking Vanna up by her armpits and moving her still body up against a wall far enough away from the Gibdo that its sword couldn't get her. Vanna could see Link from where she was, and he was still as frozen as her.

Both Kira and Zi had regained their mobility by the time Mahana had finished moving Vanna. Mahana and Kira ran around the Gibdo to attack its backside while Zi continually shot at its chest. Frustration made Vanna strain against her immobility even harder. Her spasms became stronger as a result, but she felt no closer to being able to properly move.

As the Gibdo began to darken, Midna let her arms down, and it fell to its knees in a black heap and exploded away. Out of the corner of her eye, Vanna saw Link start to move again. Seconds later, she broke free of her own paralysis so suddenly that she dropped her bow and fell forward. Zi chuckled, and she shot a glare up at him.

"Not fair," she said, looking from Zi to Mahana and Kira. "Why did  _you_  guys get your movement back faster than me and Link?"

"We're smaller," Link said as he walked over to her. "If your body's bigger, it takes a bigger curse to have more of an effect."

"That's bullshit," she grumbled. She didn't need any help standing up, but she grabbed onto and held Link's outstretched hand as she got to her feet anyway. Slinging her bow back over her shoulder, her eyes went to Midna where she was still floating in the air. "Since when can you freeze monsters in place and why have you never done it before?"

"I've always been able to. I just thought this guy deserved it for paralyzing all of you." Midna turned to look at everyone, said, "You're welcome," and then retreated into Vanna's shadow.

They took a moment to get their bearings before putting Link's plan back into action. Once they were all on the other side of the slab, heading toward a door that it had been blocking, Zi made a comment lamenting the fact that he hadn't even thought about teleporting right past all of the spikes and ghost rats and the Redead.

"Gibdo," Vanna said.

"What?" he said.

"It was a Gibdo."

"No, it wasn't!"

"It was bandaged like a mummy. Like a  _Gibdo_."

They kept up their bickering through the door until they got to a long, narrow path that just screamed  _death trap_. The floor was mostly quicksand, and on either side of the wall were spiky contraptions spinning back and forth along rails.

Zi stepped up, and after experimentally extending a leg, he turned back. "Looks like those of us who aren't challenged in the height department can just step right over to part of the floor that's safe from the spikes. There's no way the shorties in the room can get across on their own without having to trudge through the quicksand."

"I could carry you!" Kira offered to Link. "I'm stronger than I look!"

"I—I could probably—" Link started, hand going up to rub the nape of his neck.

"Or I could carry him, and you could carry Vanna," Mahana suggested. "Vanna's smaller. She'd be easier for you to carry."

Not giving Kira time to approve, and not asking if Link and Vanna approved either, Mahana scooped Link up into her arms bridal style. Kira was clearly dissatisfied to be stuck with Vanna. If Link didn't have to be carried by one of them, then Vanna would have preferred to be carried by Mahana, but she accepted being carried by Kira since it meant that she wasn't holding Link.

But the farther they went down the path, the more Vanna wished Kira would have carried Link instead. Dozens of large, black beetles appeared out of the sand. More of the bugs went toward Zi and Mahana ahead of them, but some went around and came for Kira. Kira screamed and nearly dropped Vanna when they started crawling up her legs. Mahana, on the other hand, didn't seem bothered by them at all.

At the end of the path, Zi and Mahana both went to the side of the room that had a door, but Vanna stopped Kira before she could join them. Opposite the door was a collection of skulls and pots, and she noticed the top of Ooccoo's head poking out of one of the pots. At Vanna's request, Kira stepped over there and hurriedly put her down, then flicked off all the beetles that clung to her.

Vanna got off all the beetles that had made their way to her as well, and then she flipped over the pot Ooccoo was in. Both Ooccoo and her son tumbled out of it as creepy as ever. They were actually almost worse than she remembered. Beside her, Kira made a disgusted noise.

"Gracious, it's you! It's been some time since we last met! How wonderful to see you!" Ooccoo said.

Vanna went ahead and pulled off her pouch and opened it up in front of her. "Yeah, it's ... nice to see you, too. Wanna come with?"

"Oh, are you not going to introduce me to your new friend?" Ooccoo asked. She waddled up to Kira, who flinched away.

"Um, h-hi?" Kira said. She gave Ooccoo a halfhearted wave. "I'm... I'm Kira...?"

"I'm Ooccoo, and this is my son, Ooccoo Jr.!" Ooccoo turned her head across from them, and Vanna looked back at Zi, Mahana, and Link as well. Zi and Mahana looked as disgusted as Kira did. "And those are more new friends over there, hmm?"

"Yeah. The woman's Mahana, other one's Zi." Vanna pushed her pouch out to her again. "Pouch?"

"Yes, yes, of course! Just let me know if you want to warp out!"

Ooccoo and her son flew into her pouch and Vanna put it back on her belt. Kira's expression relaxed some with them out of sight. She wordlessly picked Vanna up, walked over to the door, and put her back down.

"And I thought  _Midna_  was freaky in real life," Zi said, shuddering.

"You and Link really do keep strange company," Mahana said.

Vanna didn't voice what she was thinking because Kira still didn't know about her, but she thought that  _s_ _trange company_  went hand in hand with being a werewolf-robot team.

Zi stopped everyone again when they were through the door, though they likely would have stopped on their own regardless. Up ahead was yet another death trap contraption, rotating around with its spikes threatening to stab anyone who walked through.

"See the door up on the far wall over there?" he said. "We have to get there, and to get up there, we need to go through the gate to the right and go up, but the gate only opens when you kill the three Stalfos down that ledge right across from us..."

Mahana nudged Vanna's shoulder. "You should be able to handle this by yourself."

"Huh?" Vanna grimaced up at her. "Stalfos... They're the big skeletons with swords and shields, right?"

"Right. They're like a stronger version of the Stalchildren we came across earlier. You can knock them apart with a sword all you want, but they'll just put themselves back together. The only thing that'll take them down  _permanently_  is a bomb."

Vanna glanced at Link. "Well, he's the one with bombs, so..."

"And you can take those bombs and put them on your arrows like you did to take down the Bulblins."

Excitement sparked in Zi's eyes, and he grinned widely. "You're doing it! Link, bring your bombs and come on!"

Zi grabbed Vanna by the wrist and started walking, pulling her along behind him. It was easy to forget about his darker motives when he was radiating such childlike joy, and it was impossible for her not to laugh.

He had to briefly let go of her so they could get down on their hands and knees and safely crawl underneath the spinning death contraption, but he was right back to pulling her along once they were past it. They stopped at a ledge, and Link caught up to them a few seconds later. Down the ledge, atop a patch of sand, were two piles of bones, each with their own sword and shield.

"There's only two," Vanna said.

"Third one should be hiding in that little nook over there," Zi said, pointing. "I think someone might have to go down there to wake them up so you can blow them up... Link?"

"I need to stay beside her. I have to light the fuses so the bombs will go off," Link said.

"I'll light them," Zi said.

"You've got matches?" Vanna asked.

"No, but I can just use whatever Link uses to light them."

Link brought up his left hand, and a small flame flickered above his extended index finger. Zi's mouth fell open and his brows drew together. With a humph, he snapped his jaw shut and crossed his arms. Link dropped his arm and gave a small, satisfied smile.

"Or maybe I won't," Zi mumbled. He pursed his lips as he looked back to the piles of bones. "...But maybe you can shoot them while they're down?"

She didn't think it could hurt to try. Vanna got an arrow out as Link took out a bomb, and she gave the arrow to him. He handed the arrow back to her with the bomb attached to the head, and she nocked it on her bow. Zi was nearly bouncing with glee. After giving him a warning to plug his ears, Vanna shot the arrow between the piles of bones. It exploded with a deafening boom on impact with the sand, and the smoke cleared to reveal that the bones had been obliterated. She couldn't hear all of what Zi said, but his huge smile and playful shove were enough to tell her that he was impressed.

They had to jump down for her to aim at the final Stalfos, which she was also able to kill before it even woke. Mahana yelled to tell them that the gate had opened up, but Zi raised a finger to stop Link and Vanna from going back.

"I think I've actually got a better idea," he said. "C'mere."

Zi turned Vanna around and grabbed her sides. Thinking that he was about to force one of the NEVAs on her, she yelped and tried to pry his hands off of her, and Link's arms shot over to her. However, they both quickly realized that Zi's action was one of innocence—he lifted her up high enough that she could climb up a ledge to get to the door they were heading for.

"There you go," he said as he helped push her the rest of the way up. She looked down at him, and he was rubbing his hands. "Jeez, you two almost tore my hands off. I was just trying to be nice. We would've had to go through quicksand if we took the path that the gate was blocking."

"You'll have to forgive me for not exactly trusting you to be grabbing me like that with no warning. You should have told me what you were doing first," Vanna said.

Zi frowned at her before sighing and looking back the way they came. He called for Kira and Mahana to come their way, and they did. Mahana helped lift Link, Zi, and Kira up the ledge, and she reached and hauled herself up on her own.

"It's miniboss time! Death Sword! And when it's dead, we can finally get the thing I've been waiting for," Zi said. He shoved the door up, then looked back at Link. "Oh, you're gonna wanna be a dog for this."

They stepped into the darkest room of any that they'd been in yet, with no lit sconces or torches of its own to speak of. Were it not for Vanna's necklace, they—perhaps not including Link—wouldn't have been able to see anything at all, but even the glow from the pendant had its limits. The round room was so expansive that its light couldn't reach the other side, and Vanna could only barely make out something stuck in the floor in what appeared to be the middle of the room.

Following Zi's suggestion, Link had Midna transform him, and then they slowly started heading inward. As they neared it, Vanna realized that the object stuck in the floor in the middle of the room was a gigantic sword, longer than Mahana was tall. Numerous ropes were tied around its hilt and attached to the floor. Vanna grabbed her necklace and held the pendant out as far in front of her as she could, trying to see farther back into the room.

"...This is Death Sword?" she asked Zi, her voice echoing through the room.

Zi got out his gun and shot at one of the ropes, making it snap in half. Unfamiliar characters engraved on the blade suddenly lit up a bright red-orange, and the sword jolted. Flames shot down each of the ropes, leaving nothing but ashes behind afterward. Inky fog erupted from the ground around the sword, and with a final jolt, it came flying out of the ground. It flipped around and stopped in midair as if it was being held by an invisible foe.

" _That's_  Death Sword!" Zi said.

Link ran toward it and jumped astoundingly high, and much like the sword, he appeared to float in midair. His teeth looked to tear into nothing, reminiscent of when he had attacked the Poe earlier. When Vanna saw Mahana's hands inching to her swords in her peripheral, she decided it would be best to go ahead and get her bow ready, too. Whatever this Death Sword was, it was undoubtedly more of a threat than some lantern-holding swordless ghost. Judging by how he bailed and ran as far from it as he could, Zi must have agreed.

Link's body swung around in the air until a hard jerk made him lose his grip and fall off. In the blink of an eye, the monster became visible. Its appearance denied Vanna's expectations. Given that all the monsters in the temple up until then were different types of skeletons, she would have guessed it would also be a skeleton, not some Grim Reaper demon ram. She supposed it was enough of a thematic fit, though, considering that it was hands-down the most visually terrifying monster she'd seen in Hyrule yet. She could hardly believe that she had once found Diababa, some stupid overgrown plant, to be horrifying.

Death Sword let out a grating scream before pulling back and levitating in the air. Its head lolled and arms dangled at its sides as it slowly circled them. Vanna lifted her bow and aimed at it, but her arrow missed because it moved out of the way at the last second. For the next shot, she was sure to aim a little more to its side, and its movement put it in just the right spot to be struck.

As expected, it wasn't happy about getting shot, and it started to fly around them rapidly, getting closer with each turn. Vanna nocked another arrow—though it would have been impossible to shoot if it maintained its speed—and Link quickly had Midna transform him again. He got his sword out just in the nick of time as Death Sword came to a halt to their right side. A quick stab made Death Sword drop its sword arm and hunch forward, opening itself up to a barrage of attacks.

It was remarkable, but more so aggravating, how it managed to not succumb to all the damage they inflicted upon it. Death Sword regained control of itself and flew back into the air to presumably repeat the process. This time, the four of them turned back to back in a coordinated movement so one of them would be facing Death Sword at all times. The way Vanna was facing left Zi in her line of sight; he was near the wall with his phone out, obviously taking pictures or a video.

When Death Sword flew around to her, she shot it again. It sped around them like the previous time, but it went impossibly faster, so fast that it was a black blur. It stopped more abruptly than it had before, too; not even a second passed between Vanna realizing that it had stopped circling, and hearing the whoosh of its sword and then Kira screaming.

Vanna turned with another arrow ready, and she tried as hard as she could to not look at Kira, to just focus on bringing down Death Sword, but her eyes were drawn to her. Kira had dropped her spear and fallen to her knees, and her right arm was a bloody mess. With relief at seeing that she was still alive, Vanna forced herself to turn her attention back to Death Sword. Link had run around in front of Kira and incapacitated it again, and he unleashed an onslaught on it. Vanna half expected Mahana to run up and tear into Death Sword herself in retaliation for hurting her sister, but she was more concerned with getting Kira to safety, leaving Link and Vanna to fight it alone.

An arrow that struck directly between the eyes was Death Sword's undoing. With a scream that shook the room, it thrashed around, clawing at its head, and then it turned black. Unlike other monsters, it didn't explode away—its form disintegrated into hundreds of black moths that flew up and escaped through a hole in the ceiling.

Sconces spontaneously lit, providing sufficient light to the room and making the glow of Vanna's necklace obsolete. Link wasted no time running to catch up with Mahana, who was carrying Kira to the wall by Zi. After slinging her bow over her shoulder, Vanna followed behind at a normal pace. She wasn't looking forward to seeing just how bad Kira's injury was. Kira was propped up against the wall, tears spilling down her cheeks and hiccuping for breath, and Mahana, Link, and Zi were looking over her when Vanna made it up to them. She stayed a few feet back, giving them space.

"You're lucky it didn't take your arm clean off," Zi said.

"Can't—can you use that glue you used on your leg earlier to close it?" Kira asked.

"Not on a huge cut like that, no."

"I should have made you stay home," Mahana grumbled.

"I can stitch it up," Link offered.

After Link got out the things he needed to suture her wound, Mahana and Zi cleared room for him to do so. Mahana stayed crouched by Link and Kira, watching over his work, while Zi came to stand by Vanna.

"We can't help them..." Zi said quietly. He pointed to an archway they hadn't been through, and he smiled. "But the thing is back there. Let's go get it."


	31. Round and Round

Vanna made Zi leave both NEVAs on the floor by Link, Kira, and Mahana before they went off toward the archway together. Past the arch, up a short flight of stairs, sitting on the ground, was the ...  _thing_.

She'd thought Zi was just being intentionally vague, but  _thing_  really was one of the best descriptors for it. It was almost like a giant top with gear-like edges on the upper part. Confused and frankly unimpressed, she asked him what it was. He excitedly told her that it was actually called the spinner, and then he tried to show her how to use it. He placed it on its point with his hands and one by one inserted his feet into openings on top of it. With his shoddy balance, the spinner wobbled beneath him, and he fell off multiple times simply trying to stand up. She couldn't stop the giggles that escaped her each time he did.

Not at all dissuaded by his failures, he continued to try. Finally, he managed to stay upright and take off on it. He directed it toward a rail on the wall, and as it made contact, the gears on top latched onto it. It rose off the ground when the rail inclined, going up through a wide opening above the archway they'd entered through and back into the miniboss room. Vanna ran out to watch as Zi zoomed along around the room high off the ground. Mahana and Link were so preoccupied with Kira that they didn't even notice when Zi passed by over their heads.

She went back through the archway when Zi finished his circle around the room, making it just in time to see him get thrown off again as the spinner came off the rail. He fell to the ground harder than he had the previous times, yet he was still smiling and laughing as he got to his feet.

Vanna had no desire to try it herself, fearful of falling off, so they walked back to the miniboss room together then. She led him to sit by the door instead of joining Link, Kira, and Mahana. Zi didn't care whether they sat with them or not, but she wanted to keep some distance. There were things she wanted to ask him about, and since he didn't have either of the NEVAs on him, she figured now was the best time.

"So, you brought glue with you," she said.

"Yeah. Why, are you hungry?"

She rolled her eyes and chose to ignore that. "I have cuts on my legs. I know your dad has that kind of glue that works best for Synthuman skin, but I was wondering if what you have would work, too. Link stitched them up for me, but..."

Zi reached into his pouch, and his hand came out with the glue she'd seen Mr. Rider use before on his robots. "I brought some for you, too, just in case. Where are your cuts?"

Vanna pulled off her right boot and the bandage still wrapped around her calf while Zi got out a pocketknife. He used that to cut the stitches to pull them out, taking his time on each one.

It took her until he got to the second cut to gain the courage to ask him the first of her questions. "Your dad said when I tore myself apart, he wiped my memories  _again_..." she started slowly. "Do you know what happened the first time?"

"Huh?" He stopped what he was doing and looked up at her face, but his focus went back to her leg after a second. "Oh, yeah, he did wipe your memories twice. The first time was after a day of thoroughly testing you out before ' _officially_ ' starting you up. Just making sure you were capable of performing basic tasks and responding as you should. He said you were really suspicious of why you woke up in the factory with him and why you had to show him that you could do things, so he couldn't just leave you with those memories."

"Oh," she said quietly. That wasn't as bad as what she'd hyped herself into believing it would be. Still, she hated that she couldn't remember it. "...Do you know if it'd be possible to restore my old memories?"

"Maybe. You know nothing ever gets completely deleted on computers, just a lot harder to access, so I guess it's possible." Zi shrugged, and Vanna felt herself tense up at how casually he'd referred to her as a computer. "But I don't see why you'd want them," he added under his breath.

"If a chunk of your life was missing from your memories, wouldn't you want to get those memories back?"

"Well, yeah, but trust me, you're not missing out with missing your memories. Do you  _really_  want to remember yourself having a mental breakdown and ripping all your skin off and organs out?"

"Guess not..." Vanna mumbled. She frowned and looked away. "...What happened to my mom?"

"What do you mean?"

"I texted her a few weeks ago and told her that your dad is planning on killing me, and she read it, but she never responded..." She peeked at Zi anxiously, looking for anything in his expression that would hint at her mom's state. "She's okay, right?"

"Yeah, she's fine. My dad kinda ... well, tampered with her phone as soon as he finished talking to you. He blocked all your incoming texts from showing and set it so they'd all be marked as read anyway. She hasn't actually read anything you sent to her."

Vanna looked back at Zi, brows furrowed. "Are you  _kidding_  me?"

He sighed and put the pocketknife down, finished with taking out the last of the stitches on that leg. "Look. I'm not saying I necessarily  _agree_  with my dad's actions... But I get it. You have to think about your mom's well-being."

"What, you think it's best for her well-being to keep me from talking to her?" she angrily asked. "She deserves to know what's happening!"

"Do you really think it'd be best for her to know? Do you know how much it would break her to know that someone purposefully ended your life, especially if that very same someone is the one who brought you back to her in the first place? My dad thinks it'd be easier for her to cope if she thinks there was no foul play. He's going to tell her you were destroyed in an accident here before we could bring you back."

Vanna glared at Zi in silence, so furious that she couldn't turn her thoughts into words. In a way, she could see where he was coming from. Her mom probably  _would_  cope better thinking she was killed in an accident rather than murdered by someone she thought she could trust. Still, she deserved to know the truth, even if that truth would hurt her more than a lie. Vanna heavily doubted that Mr. Rider was really worried about how her mom would cope—he was worried that she'd be mad at him if she knew.

Zi began to glue the cuts back together, silent as Vanna was for a few moments. "...She talks about you all the time," he said gently.

Her fury simmered down, turning into the pity she felt whenever she thought of her mom's feelings for her. "Me, or her real daughter?"

"There's no difference to her."

She pursed her lips, wondering if now was the right time to ask another question that had been on her mind. "...What happened to her? To ... Vanna."

"She had a lot of health issues... She died from complications of some genetic disorder, I think. Something incurable... I don't remember exactly. I was really young when she died. I mean, so was she. She'd just turned four. She was born on March 20th, 2102, and died on March 25th, 2106."

March 20th—that was Link's birthday, too. That was one of the things Vanna had learned back when she was asking him questions about himself as they rode to Ordon for Colin's funeral. Her mind abruptly went elsewhere, though. "If that's her birthday, then why do I have a pic of her on the day she was born that's labeled as being taken on July 8th?"

Zi looked up into her eyes and stared at her critically. "You're smart enough to figure this out. Think."

"...July 8th was the day I was turned on. This time, at least," she said. "So the date on the pic was altered to go with it?"

"Yeah. My dad wanted the day you were started up to be your birthday. On your first round, your birthday actually was March 20th, but then, you know... You had to be restarted later on."

She looked away again, having nothing else she wanted to say to him. He finished gluing the final cut on her right calf, and then she wordlessly pulled up the left leg of her pants so he could glue up the cut on her thigh from the Lizalfos in Lakebed Temple. When he was done with that one, he put the pocketknife and glue back in his pouch and pulled something else out. It was a little cloth bag tied shut at the top with a drawstring, and whatever was in there jingled as he threw it into her lap.

"Money. I don't think I'll be needing any more of it. You can give it to Link."

Vanna curiously opened it up. Inside were small and colorful hexagonal gems. For all the time she'd spent in Hyrule, she'd never actually seen a Rupee. She reached in and grabbed a handful, and as she removed her hand from the bag, they grew in her palm. Though they were all the same size, only about an inch from one end to another, different colors had different weights. They made satisfying clinks as she dropped them back in the bag.

Zi got up and walked back over to Mahana, Kira, and Link, holding the spinner in his arms. Vanna readjusted her pants and put her boots back on, then stashed away the money bag and followed after.

She made it over to them while Link was putting things away and Mahana was trying to clean the blood off Kira's arm using a cloth and a waterskin. Kira had stopped crying, but her lips were still stuck in a pout.

"I got the thing," Zi said. "The spinner."

Link stood to get a better look at it. " _That's_  the thing we need to get through here?"

"Yeah. It latches onto rails on walls, like the one up there." His hands full with the spinner, Zi used his head to motion for Link to look up. "It'll get you to places you can't walk to. Problem is, we can't all ride it together, and we can't really take turns on it to get us all to where we need to be. So, unless any of you have ideas, getting through here is kinda all a one-person job at this point."

"Why would we need that when your magic bracelets can get us to places we can't walk to?" Mahana asked, standing up and putting her things away. She helped Kira get to her feet beside her. "Can't we take turns teleporting?"

"Teleporting by distance is fine when it's easy to get a good idea of how far away you are from where you need to be, and when there won't be much of an issue if your guess is a little off. It'd basically be impossible to guess in the upcoming rooms. The layouts are complicated, and I don't think it'd be a good idea to risk miscalculating in rooms where most of the floor is covered in quicksand," Zi said.

"What about fighting the powerful monster you said would be at the end?" Kira asked.

"Also a one-person job. You need to be on the spinner for the battle, and anyone not on the spinner won't be of any help." Zi held the spinner out toward Link. "And according to my visions, you're the one supposed to fight it."

Link eyed Zi suspiciously and peeked at Vanna before grabbing the spinner.

"I hate to not be able to fight it myself... But I suppose you've shown that your foresight is adequate." Mahana sighed and put a hand on Kira's uninjured shoulder. "And I think you need to rest, now. We should leave."

Vanna reached into her pouch and felt around for Ooccoo and her son's miniaturized forms and pulled them out when she found them. Ooccoo plopped to the ground at her feet, and Ooccoo Jr. went down to float beside her head. "They can warp you out. Do you want them to?" she asked.

Mahana and Kira shared a look and both nodded, and then Mahana looked at Vanna. "Do you want to come with us?"

She glanced from Link to Zi. "No, you two go ahead. I'll be sure to catch up to you with Link once the boss is killed."

"You can come to the retreat, too, Zi!" Kira said.

"Yeah, no," Mahana said. "Let's get out of here."

After Ooccoo bid Mahana and Kira farewell and reminded her son to come right back, Ooccoo Jr. started to fly in rapid circles while making his weird gibberish noises. Kira called out for Link to be careful just before she disappeared along with Ooccoo Jr. and Mahana. Ooccoo Jr. returned seconds later by himself and went back to his mother.

"You're just trying to get Vanna away from me, aren't you?" Link accused Zi.

"I'm not lying about it being impossible for more than one person to get through the rest of here. There's no way you can both ride on the spinner together," Zi said.

Link put the spinner on the floor and unbuckled his baldric. Zi asked what he was doing, but Link didn't respond to him. He put his baldric in his pouch before turning his back to Vanna and telling her to get on. The thought of riding around on his back on that thing high off the ground made her heart start racing, but if it came down to heights with him or being stuck with Zi, there would be no question.

Once she was on his back, Link stepped onto the spinner. He teetered some at first trying to get it upright, but he quickly found his balance and figured out how to propel it. It wasn't as scary as Zi's incompetence made it appear.

"Okay, showoff, I got it," Zi said.

Link hopped off, landing safely on his feet and letting the spinner topple over to the ground, and Vanna got off his back. Zi picked up the NEVAs from where he had left them on the floor and walked over to where the spinner had taken them. His face was stuck in a nervous frown and he was growing fidgety.

"Vanna," he said seriously. "My dad is going to come for you if I don't bring you back myself."

She shrugged and crossed her arms, trying to pretend that she wasn't at all frightened. "Let him. I'm not going anywhere."

"He won't be as lenient as I've been. He won't be lenient at all. The second he finds you..."

"I'll have Midna warp me away," she finished.

"He'll never get close enough to her," Link said. "Tell him he might as well give up already."

"Go shove a goat, you hick. This is none of your business," Zi said.

Midna popped up out of Vanna's shadow. "It might not be his business, but it is  _my_  business, because Vanna is working for  _me_. Remember what I told you about what'll happen if you try to get in my way?"

"You won't be here forever," Zi said.

"Neither will you if you don't back off," Midna responded.

Zi sighed and took a step closer to Vanna. "Listen, Vanna, I don't want this to happen, either. I promise, I really don't. I hate that it has to be this way... But it's inevitable, and you know it. So why bother keeping up this game of cat and mouse?"

If he weren't so tall, she would have punched him square in the face. His question, at its core, was ' _Why don't you_ _let yourself be murdered_ _?_ '—and he really had the nerve to ask her that?

"Even if it  _is_  inevitable—and it's  _not_ —that doesn't mean I have to take it lying down," Vanna said through her teeth.

He looked to his feet and quietly said, "It'd be easier if you did."

"That's enough," Link said. "Ooccoo Jr., warp him as far away from here as you can."

Ooccoo Jr. made an affirmative chirping noise and flew around Zi. Vanna hardly got to see the shock that flashed across his face before he vanished. Link thanked Ooccoo Jr. when he returned, and then he turned to look at Vanna. His features were blurred, but his expression of concern was still clear.

"It doesn't  _matter_  how far away he was warped to," she said. It was only as she heard her voice shake that she realized her entire body was shaking with anger, and only as she blinked that she realized she was on the verge of tears from it. "He set the front of the prison as a base on his NEVA. He can get back there instantly. It'd only take a couple more times teleporting by distances for him to get right back here."

"He said he can't teleport by distances in the upcoming rooms, right? Let's go to them. You'll be safe," Link said.

"And if he  _does_  manage to get to us anyway," Midna said, "he'll be ashes on the floor before he can make off with you."

"No!" Vanna yelled. Both Midna and Link were startled by her sudden outburst. "You are  _not_  killing him. If you want to kill Mr. Rider when he gets here...  _Fine_. But leave Zi out of this."

"Look how mad he makes you. Look at what he's trying to do to you. He's trying to get you  _killed_." Midna floated to her and grabbed her face in her hands. "Get that through your thick skull, Vanna.  _He's trying to get you killed._  Why do you want to  _protect_  him?"

"Because he's still my friend," she softly said. Vanna felt her cheeks heat up at the admission. She knew they would think it was stupid of her to still think of him as a friend in spite of everything, but she couldn't help what she felt.

Midna dropped her hands and drifted back, mouth slightly agape. Link stepped to stand where she had been floating.

"Friends don't stalk you or try to kidnap you so someone can murder you," Link said. "You need to let go of the past you two had together. Just 'cause he was your friend once don't mean he still is."

Vanna gulped and let her arms fall to her sides, hands still clenched into fists. Why could no one see that it was complicated? That she couldn't just  _decide_  to not care for him at all anymore? That it was hard to just  _accept_  that someone who'd been her best friend for years had turned on her at the snap of his dad's fingers?

"Come on," Link said, moving to her side and putting a hand on her back. "Let's get going. We're almost done here."

* * *

Her mind was in a haze as they traversed the prison, thinking things through and attempting to disentangle the mess that was her feelings for Zi. Luckily for her, she didn't really have to do anything that would require any of her attention as Link controlled the spinner beneath them. Unluckily for her, her introspection solved just about nothing. Her thoughts went around in circles, and her feelings were still a convoluted mess by the time they'd neared the boss door and Link let her off his back.

"We made it," he said through a yawn.

"And it seems Zi didn't come back here," Midna said from Vanna's shadow. "Probably got too scared."

"Speakin' of him... If he's right that the battle past here is a one-person job with the spinner, I'd prefer you stay by the door instead of on my back," Link said.

Vanna told him she was okay with that, and then he put the spinner in his pouch for their walk up to the door. In truth, she wasn't all that okay with it—staying away and leaving him to do everything made her feel bad, even though she knew she'd be unhelpful at best and a burden at worst clinging to his back while he rode around.

Like in the Forest Temple and the Goron Mines, the boss door was so big that its lock was unreachable, but Vanna didn't have to climb on Link's shoulders to unlock it. Since she was no longer a mere shadow, Midna was able to grab the key they'd found and fly up to unlock the door for them. Vanna was surprised when Midna assisted them even further by using her hand-hair to push the door open all by herself. It was a strange but welcome change of pace for her to actually be helpful.

The boss was visible almost as soon as they entered the dark and spacious circular room. With the exception of the outer edge, the room was entirely a sand-filled sinkhole, and the arm and head of a colossal, horned, skeletal creature were motionless down in the sand. A multitude of swords and spears were embedded into its skull. Zi had said it was called Stallord; Vanna figured she should have guessed that the boss of a temple filled with skeletal Stal-monsters would be an enormous skeleton.

Though Stallord's body made no indication that it knew they had entered, deep chuckles echoed throughout the room. In a flash of black squares, someone Vanna had only seen once before appeared on its head—Zant. Midna shot in front of her and Link, hand-hair formed into a giant fist behind her back, while Link retrieved his sword from his pouch.

"You've brought your light world pets with you yet again... How astonishing that your precious ' _divine beast_ ' lives at all, nonetheless as a human again. No wonder some call him ' _hero_ ,'" Zant said, spitting his final word out with all the derision he could muster.

Vanna remembered that at their last encounter, he had spoken to Midna in an alien tongue, and that made her realize that he was speaking in Hylian this time only so that she and Link could understand him.

"But truly, this is a bittersweet reunion..." Zant went on. "For I fear this is the last time we will see your hero alive!"

Zant curled his thin fingers out in front of himself and summoned a glowing red sphere like he previously had in the Light Spirit's cavern. Expecting him to hurl it at them, Vanna positioned herself to take off running. Instead of using it as a projectile, a massive intricate sword materialized from it in his hands. With a grunt, he spun it around and lodged it into Stallord's head. The glowing red lines from the sword transferred to Stallord, running over the surface of its bones.

After Zant turned around, he disappeared the same way he had come. Midna's fist-hair relaxed some, though it stayed twitching like it was ready to ball up again and punch at any second.

The room began to rumble and pinkish orbs illuminated in Stallord's eye sockets. It lifted its head, and the rest of its upper body emerged from where it'd been buried, sending a flurry of sand flying. Stallord bent forward until its face was mere feet from ours, and with no lungs or larynx, let out a hoarse roar.

Link again voiced his desire for Vanna to stay back as he swapped out his sword for the spinner. She stood by the door, brows together and mouth set in a frown, while he zoomed off on the rails around the sand pit. Now that she knew what he was up against, her inaction made her feel even worse. She had no idea what she could do to help him, though. If all those giant swords in Stallord's head had done nothing to it, she couldn't see how her dinky little arrows could. If only she'd had bombs that didn't require a fuse to be lit...

Playing nervously with the pendant around her neck, she kept her eyes on him. It was hard to watch, especially when he detached the spinner from the rails and went careening down to where Stallord's spine emerged from the sand. As the spinner smashed against its vertebrae, they cracked and gave out.

Vanna had been fearful that the spinner would have trouble getting back up the incline and Link would get stuck in the whirling sands, but he'd picked up enough speed that it wasn't a problem. What  _was_  a problem were the skeletons that raised from the sand. They were all no taller than the average man, decked in rusted armor with rusted swords and shields to boot. They seemed particularly dead for the undead, heads fallen limply to the side and arms hanging uselessly—but though they weren't actively seeking to harm, they created obstacles for Link. He would have to weave through them to get to Stallord.

For her, however, they presented an opportunity to help. With how frail they looked, she was sure that her arrows could knock them down. Midna moved to float at her side while she shot at them. That, too, was another change of pace for Midna. She normally stayed in the shadows during boss battles, not watching and evidently not caring.

With Vanna shooting down the most obtrusive skeletons—the ones that formed lines of defense around Stallord's spine—the battle became almost too easy. If he timed his jump from the rails right, Link could make it to the vertebrae and back safely. Neither the swings of Stallord's arms nor the dark substance it spewed could reach her, and Link moved fast enough to avoid the attacks.

Link soon decimated the final vertebra below where Stallord's ribcage began, and with a final echoing bellow, Stallord fell to its side and the glow in its eyes flickered out. Its body was engulfed by the sand and the remainder of the smaller skeletons sunk with it. Vanna felt ridiculous for having been such a worrywart over what had to be the easiest boss yet (not that she could judge how hard Morpheel was, though).

The sand began to lower like it was draining out of the pit. Link tried to steer the spinner back up to the outer perimeter where Midna and Vanna were, but by the time he'd made it over, the sand was too far down for him to get up. Vanna jumped down to him before the sand could lower to the point where it was no longer safe to. The sand continued to lower at a brisk pace until it was all drained out and they were on the solid floor at the bottom of the pit.

A hole for the spinner to slot into was in the center of a slightly raised circle. More important than that was Stallord's skull, lying lifeless on the ground. The fact that it hadn't exploded away into nothing as was usual with monsters left Vanna on edge, but Link didn't seem too bothered by it; his eyes were set on the hole. He slowly walked to it with the spinner in hand, but Vanna stayed back with Midna.

"Um, you're not worried about the skull?" Vanna asked.

He glanced back at her and shrugged. "Looks dead to me."

"It always looked dead," she said. "That means nothing."

She could guess why Link was apathetic about it—he was too tired to think straight. He was fighting off a yawn as he sluggishly put the spinner into the hole and stepped onto it.

The rotating gears on the spinner made the inner circular platform begin to rise farther up. Vanna hopped onto it, though she hated the idea of being stuck on it with Stallord's skull. She watched it cautiously while Link worked to bring the platform up, only taking her eyes off of it when they were as high as Link could get them. There was an open archway in the outer wall, and it looked like there was supposed to be a bridge to connect it to the platform, but there wasn't.

Midna was looking the same way. "I bet the Mirror of Twilight is past that arch... If our big skeletal friend really is dead after all, we should go. I can use my hair to get you and Link over the gap."

She went ahead and flew over. Vanna turned to ask Link if he really wanted to leave while Stallord was arguably yet undefeated, and she gasped. Link was walking toward her with the spinner in his arms, unaware that Stallord's head was floating behind him with the glow back in its eyes. Everything happened so fast, then—Stallord rushed forward, Vanna bolted to get out of its path and yelled for Link to watch out, and she looked back to see Stallord ram into Link, making him drop the spinner and go flying off the edge.

Link's scream cut off suddenly as he hit the ground below, and a wave of nausea hit Vanna.


	32. Broken

As someone who never got ill, nausea was not something Vanna was familiar with; the only other time she'd ever felt it was when she found out what she was. This time was worse.

Midna darted to Link, and she yelled up, "He's okay!"

The nausea subsided to some degree. Vanna doubted that ' _okay_ ' was the right word to use, but she would take it as long as ' _okay_ ' meant ' _alive_.'

She still needed to get down there and see that Link was okay for herself. She just barely avoided getting rammed into by Stallord as she hurried to grab the spinner. Not taking the time to think about how she hardly understood how to use it, she pushed the gear against the top of the rail that coiled up and around the platform and jumped onto it. After a few excruciating seconds that felt like hours of trying to figure it out, it took off down the rail.

Going down felt like it took forever, too, though Vanna knew she was going absurdly fast. She didn't dare look back to see, but she knew that Stallord was chasing her. She didn't bother to wait for the spinner to bring her all the way down; she was probably ten feet above the ground when she detached it from the rail and leaped off, and she stumbled her way over to Link.

Out of all the words she could have used to describe how he was, ' _okay_ ' was not one of them. His face was twisted and body writhing with agony, his breaths were quick and shallow, and his left arm was curled against his stomach with his right hand hovering protectively over his left elbow.

"He had his left elbow back when he hit the ground. He thinks he broke it and some ribs," Midna said hastily.

Link groaned. "I don't  _think_ —I  _know_."

Vanna was about to ask him how his head was, but a roar from Stallord cut her off. It was still a ways above them, but it was racing closer every second.

"I need to get Zant's sword out of the skull," Midna said. "It'll keep that thing alive as long as it's still in there. Stay here!"

Telling them to stay wasn't quite necessary, because Link certainly wasn't going anywhere and there wasn't anywhere to go but in a circle regardless. Midna streaked into the air and in front of Stallord, and it stopped where it was. She looked so tiny next to it. Vanna remembered how featherlight Midna had felt in her arms when she'd carried her through Castle Town, and she couldn't imagine her removing the sword.

Midna planted her feet on its head, and though Vanna couldn't see exactly what she was doing with her back being turned to her, she surmised that she was holding and pulling at the sword. Stallord twitched violently in an attempt to throw her off to no avail. It seemed like she was having no luck dislodging the sword, but at least she was keeping Stallord from attacking.

Vanna looked back at Link as she heard him groan. He was trying to sit up, and his face had scrunched up even further with pain. She told him he should lay back down, but he just made a disapproving grunt at her and continued sitting up. He kept his left arm close to himself and moved his right arm around to fumble with one of his pouches.

It dawned on her what he was probably reaching for. "Do you want me to get the rest of your blue potion out for you?"

"No, 's no good for broken bones," he panted. "Get bombs."

"Bombs?" she repeated. She said nothing of it, but she thought he had to have a concussion.

He groaned again, like he was frustrated with her for not immediately understanding why he wanted them. "To shoot at the skull. I'll light 'em for you."

Vanna wasn't sure how effective that would be, though she figured it wouldn't hurt to try. Midna was still struggling.

She got out the bomb bag and attached a bomb to one of the few arrows she had left. After taking aim, she yelled for Midna to move. Midna took cover near the ground once she saw what Vanna was up to. Link used his right hand to light the fuse, and she let the bomb arrow fly.

Thankfully, she managed to hit Stallord on the first try. The blast blew it back and cracked the bone around the sword. Overall, it didn't seem to have done too much damage, but she hoped the cracks would be enough to give Midna an easier time. Midna flew back up, and rather than using her hands as she had done before, she wrapped her hand-hair around the hilt.

With a forceful tug, the sword came out and dissipated into black slices in Midna's grasp. The glow in Stallord's eye sockets instantaneously went out, and it fell from the air. Right as it hit the ground, it exploded into a black cloud of smoke, and then it was gone.

Midna was slow floating back over to them. Vanna didn't feel the relief that she normally felt when bosses were killed, and she didn't think Link or Midna did, either. Link had his eyes closed again, and he hung his head. Save for his quick breaths, it was silent for a few moments.

Vanna was the first to break the silence. "...A potion really won't help you?" she gently asked. Though she remembered him telling her that potions couldn't always heal severe injuries, it was hard to believe that they were entirely worthless for healing bones.

"Potions can make broken bones heal wrong," he said, voice feeble. "I can't risk it. Not with my left arm."

Midna hummed. "So you'll just have to get the shaman of Kakariko Village to cast it... Do you think you can hold off? We're  _so_  close to the Mirror of Twilight..."

"I thought the whole point of us looking for the Mirror of Twilight was that it would get us to Zant, so he could be taken down," Vanna said. "There's no way Link can go up against him as hurt as he is."

"Link won't have to fight Zant right away. We'll figure something out once we get to the mirror," Midna said. She flicked her wrist and made one of her portals appear on the ground beneath them. "Go grab the spinner, Vanna. I'll warp us to that archway up there."

Vanna put the bomb bag back in Link's pouch before going to grab the spinner. Its size made it hard to maneuver it around her to get it into her pouch, but she got it in there. Link was still in the process of getting to his feet when she walked back to the portal, and she noticed blood coating the hair on the back of his head. He must have cracked it hard when he fell. His left arm stayed folded over his abdomen, face stayed twisted, and his narrowed eyes were rimmed with red; she'd never seen him look so miserable. She wanted to help him stand the rest of the way up, but she didn't know where she could grab him to offer support without causing him more pain.

When Link had straightened up, Midna warped them. Vanna started to worry about how they would get out of the desert as the pieces of her body reformed under the arch. Midna's own ' _short distance_ ' portals, as she had called them, did not require Link to transform, but the twilight portals all over Hyrule  _did_ —what would happen to him if he transformed with broken bones?

Midna was nearly bouncing in the air with impatience while Link limped down the hall and Vanna kept pace with him. They came out the other side on a balcony of sorts that wrapped around the prison. Stars were still in the dark sky, but orange was beginning to form on the horizon.

Eventually, they made it up to the coliseum-like top of the Arbiter's Grounds. In the middle of the sandy atrium was a towering statue of a woman with a snake twirling around her body, and Vanna could faintly make out spinner rails along the snake. Sturdy black chains reached below the sand from the six pillars that stood high into the night sky. Though the pillars were impossible to miss even from miles away, it wasn't until now that she saw that the top of one of them was broken in half.

Seeing as Link was in no shape to be doing much of anything, Vanna figured it was on her to ride the spinner to the top of the statue. She started walking toward it while reaching into her pouch. The spinner enlarged as she pulled it out, and unable to hold it with one hand, she dropped it.

As she turned to pick it back up, black spires suddenly slammed into the ground, and glowing red lines connected them. She looked around briskly—she was barricaded in, and Link was on the other side.

"What's going on?!" she said.

Vanna heard whooshing sounds from above her, prompting her to look up. In the sky was a large portal like the ones Midna made, but the lines were red. Five grotesque black creatures fell out of the whorls one by one, each landing in heaps and then raising on all fours. Her heart started to race, and her body itched to run, but she knew she had nowhere to go. She was trapped with these nightmare creatures.

"Get your sword out!" Midna said.

She came right over the barriers and floated in front of Vanna, holding her thin arms out to either side as if to protect her. Vanna was puzzled for a second by her demand—she'd been exclusively using the bow and arrows for too long—but she retrieved it and the wooden shield from her pouch when it kicked in. Her sword felt foreign in her hand, too heavy, and she wished she hadn't traded out the metal shield for Link's flimsy wooden one.

Midna thrust her hands toward the nearest monster, and orange arcs shot at it, freezing it in place. Vanna almost felt like she was on autopilot as she rushed to it and began slashing at it. She wasn't sure if time just felt like it was flowing differently because of an adrenaline rush (or the robot equivalent of one), but it went down sooner than she'd expected, just in time for Midna to freeze the next one that came running to her. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she recognized that something was off with these monsters as the one she'd ' _killed_ ' hadn't exploded away.

The next one didn't explode either, nor did the third. It felt like she'd somewhat come back to her senses after that one was downed, and she had a chance to catch her breath. The two left over were roaming around on the other side of the atrium, paying no mind to her at all, but they were closer together than any of the other three were. She didn't know what she would do if Midna could only freeze one at a time; the other would surely notice her.

"You have to kill those two at the exact same time," Midna said.

Vanna whipped her head around to look at her. " _What?_ "

"If one Shadow Beast is left over, it'll scream to revive the ones who've fallen," she explained. "So the last two always have to be killed at the same time, or else you'll be starting all over at the beginning."

"But you can freeze them both, right?" she asked.

Midna grimaced. "When Zant stole my Fused Shadow, he stole a lot of the power I had with it... I don't think I can hold an energy field over both of them for long. It'd be best for me to do it at the last minute. That way if you kill one a little earlier, I'll have the other one already paralyzed so it can't scream."

Vanna gulped heavily as she looked back at them, and she had to hold back a whine. Taking a few steadying breaths, she assured herself that she could do it, and then she charged at them. She decided to go for her tried-and-fairly-true method of swordfighting—swinging like crazy while hiding behind her shield like a little bitch.

That worked ... for about ten seconds, before one of them punched the shield and it snapped in half. The force of the blow made her stagger backward, and as she struggled to regain her footing, the other beast took a swipe at her. Sizzling, fiery pain erupted in four lines over her right arm, making her scream and drop her sword. Tears pricked at her eyes instantly.

Before either of them could attack again, Midna used her power to stun them. "Hurry! I can't hold them for long, but you've almost got them!"

She tried her best to ignore the pain in her arm as she grabbed her sword from the ground. Each broad swing sent a new wave of burning down the cuts, and the burning invigorated her in turn. Vanna slashed back and forth as fast as she could while ensuring she hit both of them each time.

Midna's arms dropped and her electricity crackled out, and Vanna knew it was over. All of the Shadow Beasts and the spires exploded into paper-thin twilight squares that shot up into the sky. She watched them go up to the portal, which turned black and cyan instead of black and red before vanishing. The stars it had been concealing looked distorted, making it evident that the portal was still there, just (mostly) invisible.

" _That_  was close," Midna said. "At least now we can use their portal to get back here whenever we want."

Link hobbled over to them. His nearness calmed Vanna, but it was clear that he hadn't calmed himself yet. "Are you okay?" he worriedly asked.

Vanna followed his sight down to her arm. Now that she was no longer moving it, the pain was steadily waning. She used her left hand to wipe at her eyes. "I'm okay... I—I guess I was expecting worse, honestly."

"I'd offer to stitch those up for you... But I think my elbow might pop out if I move my arm," he said with a frown.

She sighed, and then mumbled, "Should have made Zi leave the glue with me... And I'm sorry about your shield."

Link attempted to shrug and flinched. "It—it's all right. We can get another."

She looked at Midna as the sight of her arm started to make her uneasy. "Thank you for helping me."

"Yeah, I thought this would be a bad time to let you get killed," she said flippantly. Vanna snorted at her waving off the one genuine  _thank-you_  she was ever going to get from her, and a smile lit up Midna's face. "Now take the spinner and go up to the top of that statue! That's probably the last thing that has to be handled before we get the mirror!"

Vanna took one last glance at the rippling stars before going to pick up the spinner where she'd dropped it. The lingering burn in her arm was relieved by the biting wind as she rode up the spiraling snake. At the top of the statue's head, the snake rail ended, and the spinner dropped off right into a gear-shaped hole. She moved her feet back and forth against the pedaling contraptions to keep the spinner moving.

A sudden jolt nearly made her fall over, and then something started happening. The statue began to lower into the sand, and the pillars began to rise. Her feet met more resistance and the pedals got harder and harder to push. The top of a large black slab emerged from the sand, pulled up by the creaking chains attached to the pillars. She watched as it rose, using it for motivation to keep going. With the monolith was entirely unearthed, dangling high above the sand, the statue she was on submerged completely and she could move the spinner no more. Out of breath, she stepped off the spinner and put it away, and then she turned around.

Opposite the monolith, a short platform had risen from the sand. A semicircle frame was atop it, and nestled into one side of the frame was a fragment of something dark, chipped around the edges. Midna flew up to it and froze.

Vanna peered at Link inquisitively, and the look on his face told her he was as confused as she was. They took the short flight of stairs up the platform to Midna. She collapsed on the ground in front of the frame, head in her hands, sobs racking her tiny body. Shock piled on top of the confusion Vanna felt. It had to be a cold day in hell with Midna crying.

But as her eyes were drawn back to the black fragment, she noticed her reflection in it, and it hit her. That  _was_  the Mirror of Twilight—a fragment of it. It was broken.

A quiet gasp from beside her made her glance at Link again. She thought that he had gasped because he'd come to the same understanding she had, but she realized that he was shocked by something else, something high above them. She looked where he was looking, and she gasped, too.

Floating over the five intact pillars were apparitions that radiated ethereal white light. They were of varying sizes, though their masks and flowing robes obscured any other distinguishing features they might have had.

"A dark entity lurks in the twilight, housing an evil power..." The words sounded like they were sung from a choir, with voices that were distinct and somehow blended into a uniform indistinctness at once. "You seek the mirror that will lead you to it."

"Yes," Link responded breathlessly.

"We sages have guarded the Mirror of Twilight since ancient times at the command of the Goddesses... But it has been fragmented by mighty magic. That magic is a dark power that only  _he_  possesses... His name is ... Ganondorf."

Vanna was unsure if she was just hearing things, but she could have sworn that Link whispered the name along with the chorus of voices.

They were both silent as the sages recounted the tale of Ganondorf. Some of the story was already familiar to her, particularly the part about the invading band of thieves that tried to gain dominion over the Sacred Realm, which Link had briefly described to her when she'd asked him what the Triforce was. The rest was all new to her; how Ganondorf had been the one in charge of the thieves, how he'd been exposed and the sages brought him here to this very Mirror Chamber to exact their justice upon him, how, ' _by some divine prank_ ,' he'd wound up with a piece of the Triforce...

The sages turned dejectedly to the broken sixth pillar as they described how Ganondorf had killed one of their own. They claimed to have banished him to the Twilight Realm following the murder, and from there speculated that he had passed on his evil power to Zant.

"You're just now figuring out where Zant got his power?" Midna said. Though her words themselves were harsh, she spoke them with a softer tone than Vanna had ever assumed was possible to come from her mouth. "It's far too late... Zant already destroyed the mirror."

"It is not too late," the sages said in unison. "Only the true leader of the Twili can utterly destroy the Mirror of Twilight ... so Zant could merely break it into pieces. The fragments now lie hidden across the land of Hyrule."

For the first time, the sages did not speak all at once. A sage with a deep, old voice, said, "One is in the snowy mountain heights..."

"One is in an ancient grove..." came a woman's and child's voice.

"And one is in the heavens..." came another woman's and a man's voice.

"You who have been sent by the Goddesses should be able to gather the three pieces," they all said together. "But you must be prepared, for a dangerous power resides in those fragments..."

One by one, the sages' forms flickered away like embers into the sky. The final one to disappear, the littlest one, lifted a hand and gave a small wave before it went away. Link stared at where that sage had been, a hint of a smile on his lips, while Vanna took a hesitant step toward Midna.

"Are you all right...?" she cautiously asked.

Midna rubbed her eyes before crossing her arms. "I still can't believe... He thwarted us  _again_. All this work to get here for nothing..."

Vanna crouched down next to her. "It wasn't for nothing. Even if the mirror wasn't broken, it's not like it would have been useful to us right now anyway. Link kinda broke his arm, remember?"

"I know..." She huffed. "But the mirror being broke pushes this whole thing back even further than Link breaking his arm. It'll be weeks before Link can properly use his arm again, and then weeks of trying to track down the fragments with only those vague little clues they gave us..."

"I'm sure the fragments won't be that hard to find," she said. Especially since Zi had given her that list of all the temples...

"We'll see," Midna grumbled. She pushed herself off the ground into the air. "I'll go ahead and warp us to Kakariko Village now..."

"Wait," Vanna said, standing up. "I promised Mahana I'd catch up to her with Link at the retreat once the boss was killed... She'll probably think we died if we don't show up soon."

"Well, while you were out of it before, Link killed some Shadow Beasts between the town and the retreat, so there's a new portal close by it. I can warp you two there first," she said.

"But, I was going to say, I'm actually kind of worried about using those portals..."

Vanna didn't have the chance to explain herself before Midna tonelessly said, "You've used them before. They're the safest, fastest way to get around."

"It's not that I think the portals aren't safe, it's that..." She looked back at Link, who was standing there silently, still with his left arm clutched close to himself. "Link has to transform to go through the twilight... What if transforming does damage to him because of his bones?"

Midna said, "Oh," at the same time Link insisted, "I'll be fine."

"Just moving a broken bone  _normally_  can do more damage to the bone and the nerves and tissue around it," Vanna said. "Having your entire body transform into a  _wolf_  has to shift your bones a lot."

"Now really isn't the time to play all brave, Link," Midna backed her up. "You're already going to be out of commission for weeks; you don't need to hurt your arm even more."

"Then I'll only transform as little as needed," Link said through a yawn. "Once to get out of here, then I'll stay a wolf 'til we get to Kakariko. Vanna can go to the retreat right quick by herself."

Midna looked at Vanna for her approval, which she reluctantly gave only because the alternative—riding all the way there—would take too long. She produced the shadow crystal in her hand and flung it at Link. He doubled over, falling to his hands and knees with a cry. His human voice turned into canine yelps as he transformed. The transformation completed swiftly, but his wolf body stayed on the ground whimpering.

Vanna dropped to her knees in front of him and unthinkingly reached out to pet him. She repeatedly whispered to him that he was okay while gently rubbing him until he stopped whimpering. As he opened his big blue eyes and stared at her with markedly human awareness, she sheepishly drew her hands back. It was so easy to forget that it was really  _him_  underneath all that fur and not just some animal.

"Do you feel okay?" she asked.

Link nodded and attempted to stand up. He let out another yelp and nearly fell forward as he put pressure on his front left leg. He balanced himself on three legs instead.

"Stay right where Midna warps us until I get back from the retreat, all right?" she said. "Don't walk around on that leg and hurt it even more."

He nodded again, and then Vanna felt her body break apart into shreds as Midna warped them away.

* * *

When they got to Kakariko Village not much later, Midna summoned the shadow crystal from Link's body, transforming him back into a human. He was left on the ground crying out again, body hunched over his left arm. Vanna knelt down beside him, but she kept from petting or cooing at him this time. He took a minute to regain himself, and then reached out to her with his right arm for support to stand up.

"I'll be in the shadows..." Midna said before disappearing beneath their feet.

They walked down the village side by side, with her only leaving him once to check if Renado was in the sanctuary. He wasn't, so they went to the Elde Inn hoping he'd be there.

To their luck, he was, and he was already awake and leisurely pacing the front lobby. His warm brown eyes trailed to them as they stepped in, and his normally peaceful face furrowed.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice staying measured and composed.

Renado walked to them, eyes scanning them from head to toe as he did. They narrowed abruptly, and he stopped in his tracks.

Vanna's heart felt like it could have stopped when she realized what he was looking at. Her arm. She couldn't believe she'd been so preoccupied thinking about Link's injuries that she'd forgotten about her own.

"I'll explain later," she said quickly. She pointed to Link to get his attention off her. "Link fell. Like probably eighty feet. He broke his arm, and some ribs, and he cracked his head on the ground and he's bleeding."

Renado gestured to a stool at the table he was standing next to. "Please sit down, Link. I will go get all I need to attend to you."

Link and Vanna walked over while Renado headed for the front doors. Renado glanced at her once more as they passed each other by. She felt like she could breathe again as she heard the door close behind him.

"This is great," she muttered.

Link sat down gently and frowned at her. "It'll be okay," he said, words slightly slurring together.

She sighed and took off her belt, then sat it on the table and took off Link's tunic. As she reached for her pouch on her belt, she noticed that Link's brows were raised and he was eyeing her midriff. She pulled out her long-sleeved cropped shirt from home and put it on over her bandeau top; it was the only long-sleeved thing she had aside from her dress, and she wanted her arm covered in case someone else came into the lobby. She thought she looked stupid wearing a teal shirt with maroon pants, but Link didn't seem to mind the mismatched colors. His eyes stayed on her midriff.

"Is my bellybutton that fascinating?" she jokingly asked.

It was hard to tell with his cheeks and ears still being sunburnt, but she thought he reddened a touch further. He tore his eyes away and looked at her face. "It's ... an average bellybutton, I guess?"

Vanna breathed out a halfhearted laugh. "I think that concussion's starting to kick in."

"Don't have a concussion."

"Sure," she drawled as she sat down on a stool next to him. "Today really hasn't been your day, huh? You're still all sunburnt, you got thrown off the Bullbo, then attacked by a horde of Bulblins, knocked out by a giant axe-wielding Bulblin, and now this..."

He pursed his lips contemplatively. "...I haven't been wearin' my hat."

"...Yeah?" she said. "Do you have a point, or do you just miss your hat?"

"Point is, none of this probably would'a happened if I had my hat on," he said like it was obvious.

"Uh huh," she said, smiling. She wondered if this was how he'd felt when she was acting loopy from the heat in the desert. "I'm sure wearing your stup—I mean,  _charming_  hat would have prevented all of this."

"Damn right," he murmured.

The room fell into silence. Vanna nervously played with her fingers, going over what she'd say to Renado in her head while they waited for him to get back.

Link perked up a couple of minutes later, ears twitching. "Renado's coming."

Her breath hitched. ' _It'll be okay_ ,' she told herself, the voice in her head taking on Link's timbre. As she thought the words, Link repeated them aloud, and he reached over to squeeze her knee with his right hand. She laid her hand over his and looked into his eyes. He gave her an easy smile.

She would tell Renado what she was. If he was disturbed or wary or anything at all—well, it wouldn't really matter in the end what he thought. She trusted that he would never say anything to intentionally upset her and she trusted that he would keep her secret. Renado was too kind. Her fears were unfounded.

With a sigh, Vanna repeated, "It'll be okay," and then one of the front doors opened.


	33. Days of Mending

Renado was calm and mostly quiet as he tended to Link. He had him remove his shirt, offering soothing apologies when the movement caused Link pain, before tenderly feeling the places Link said hurt the most. Even the most delicate brushes of his fingers caused Link to flinch, for which he softly apologized each time. Already, Link's elbow and his back were turning a nasty purple. Renado said that Link's elbow was definitely broken, though thankfully not displaced, and that four of his ribs were fractured.

Since Link's head was still weeping blood, Renado wanted to take care of that first. He had Vanna hold Link's thick, blood-matted hair out of the way while he cleansed and then stitched the wound. She paid close attention to how he did it in case she'd ever need to stitch Link herself. While he stitched, he rattled off a list of symptoms for Link to respond if he was experiencing or not. He responded yes to most of them, and Renado declared him to have a concussion. Vanna couldn't see his face, but she nearly heard his eyes roll at that.

Renado agreed with Link that it would not be wise to take a health potion yet for fear of his arm healing incorrectly, so there was nothing he could do to aid the healing of his ribs. He picked up a clear bottle filled with an icy blue potion and asked Vanna to rub it over Link's back and shoulders, saying it would reduce the pain from his broken ribs and sunburn. He scooped up some of it to apply on Link's arm before handing the bottle to her. Cold seeped through the glass, and the concoction itself was even colder on her fingers.

While Renado worked on splinting his arm, Vanna diligently massaged the potion over Link. It felt weirdly—but not unpleasantly—intimate. He let out sighs when her hands roamed over the most heavily bruised spots, clearly feeling nice on his end. She couldn't help but wonder if he found it intimate, too, or if that was just her being ridiculous.

She finished thoroughly coating his back and shoulders with the potion long before Renado was finished, so she went to rinse her hands and then sat back down on a stool to wait. Renado created a sling out of spare strips of cloth when he was finally finished with the splint, and then he gave Link his final prognosis. He would do a full cast in several days once some of the swelling went down, and then the cast would be removed in about a month. After that, if his elbow seemed healed enough, Link could finally take a health potion to speed up the end of the recovery process. Renado guessed that it would likely be at least a month and a half before Link could go back to life as normal.

A month and a half cooped up in this little village, maybe more, after they'd just spent three consecutive weeks here... Frankly, Vanna couldn't say that she hated the idea. She knew she'd be irrationally worried about Mr. Rider and Zi finding her in the village, and she somewhat agreed with Midna that Link's injury pushing back Zant's defeat was a letdown ... but it was certainly better than trekking through danger-filled temples. She'd grown to like Kakariko during the time they'd been here.

Renado's even voice calling her name pulled her out of her thoughts. "Vanna... You said you would explain why your arm looks the way it does?"

Link's right hand found her knee again, and she took a calming breath before starting to explain.

* * *

"Mr. Rider is real tall, old, has light skin, green eyes, short brown and gray hair, and he's kinda goin' bald," Talo said, listing each item off with a lifted finger.

"Yes," Vanna said, nodding. "You're sure you can remember all that?"

"Pfft! Of course I can! Now what's this Zi guy look like?"

Knowing that Vanna was still nervous about Zi and Mr. Rider coming for her, Link had made the suggestion of asking Talo to watch out for them a few days into their stay. Talo spent a lot of time on the lookout for monsters heading for the village using a spare pair of ' _hawkeye_ ' binoculars he'd found in Malo Mart, so if anyone would spot them, it was him. However, a few others had gathered to listen to her descriptions of them when they'd overheard her telling Talo about bad guys potentially coming to town. Link and Vanna were sitting on the steps of the Elde Inn's porch, and Talo, Beth, Ilia, and a Goron were standing on the ground across from them.

"Zi's the same age as me and Link, but he's a lot taller— _really_  tall, like his dad, actually even a little taller than him," Vanna said. "But he doesn't look much like his dad at all otherwise. He's tan with spiky black hair and brown eyes. He's really thin, too."

"Skinny, tall, tan, spiky black hair, brown eyes," Talo listed. "Got it."

"I think... I think I saw him before!" Beth said. "A boy like that came through town like a month ago when you and Link weren't here."

"It probably was him," Vanna said. "Renado told me he passed through when we were gone."

Beth gasped and clasped her hands in front of her chest. "Really?! He was so  _cute_! How could he be a bad guy?!"

Vanna sighed. Apparently Zi was going to start amassing his own fangirls in Hyrule, too.

"Looks aren't everything, Beth," Link said with gentle authority. "Hasn't your ma ever told you not to judge a book by its cover?"

She humphed and mumbled, "Yes..."

Link patted his leg with his right hand, and Beth's lips curled up as she came over to sit in his lap. Carefully wrapping her arms around his back, she nestled up to him. He could only return her hug with his right arm. Vanna had learned this was a standard procedure for any sort of admonishing he did, to let the child know there was no hostility.

The Goron (she still wasn't able to tell most of them apart) smiled widely, showcasing his freakishly huge teeth. "I will tell the patrolling Gorons to keep their eyes peeled for these humans."

She smiled back at him and thanked him, and then he walked away. Ilia took a timid step forward.

"Could I talk to you, Vanna?" she asked.

Vanna blinked a few times, glanced at Link, and stood from the stairs with a nod. She and Ilia walked away from the Elde Inn together silently. Vanna wondered what she wanted to say to her. They had talked before, but never in private.

Ilia stopped by the sanctuary and turned to her, brows drawn together with concern. "I noticed that you didn't say  _why_  those bad guys would come here... Did you think it might scare the children?"

That wasn't what Vanna was expecting. "No, no, that's not it at all. The kids have no reason to be scared of them. I just didn't say why because it's ... kinda a long story."

Ilia tilted her head. "Well... I've got time. Would you mind telling me why Rider and Zi would come here? I'm curious what they're after."

Vanna took a deep breath. "Me."

"Bad guys want  _you_?" she asked, eyes wide. Vanna nodded, and Ilia asked, "Why?"

She pursed her lips and looked away, contemplating what to tell Ilia without telling too much. Telling Renado the truth about her had gone astonishingly well—he'd asked few questions, promised her he wouldn't tell anyone, and even stitched and bandaged her arm for her afterward—but she was still hesitant to let her secret spread any further.

"The short of it is, they think I've committed a crime," Vanna slowly said. Ilia's eyes widened more, and she quickly added, "But I haven't. I haven't done anything wrong, and they want to kill me because they think I did."

Ilia was silent for a few moments, taking it in. "...You really think that wouldn't scare the kids? That's... That's terrifying."

"I don't see why the kids would be scared... It's not like they're targets or anything. Mr. Rider and Zi are only out for me."

"I understand—but I think that's plenty reason for the kids to be scared," Ilia said with a rueful grin. "They have so much fun with you. I think they'd be scared for you if they knew."

"Oh." Vanna hadn't considered that at all, but she could see where Ilia was coming from. The kids had already lost a friend of theirs not too long ago, and though they hadn't known her for long, she'd become one of the few near-constant presences they had over the past few weeks. Her death would be yet another change in their already unstable lives.

Ilia's eyes flickered behind her. "Speaking of fun..."

Vanna looked back to see Talo bounding in their direction. He skidded to a stop in front of them, beaming and hopping with anticipation.

"Hey! Do you wanna shoot down some targets?"

* * *

It was a cloudy, chilly day outside. Link and Vanna had been back in the village for exactly two weeks. They'd spent most of their days bouncing around from person to person, but today was different; all of them, save the adults, were together at once by the Spirit's Spring. Excited at the prospect of playing in the rain, which normally skipped right over Kakariko to hit the grassy plains beyond it, Luda had orchestrated an outdoor gathering.

Talo and Malo were skimming pebbles on the water, Ralis was out floating on his back by the miniature waterfall (he stayed the most on the outskirts of the group, not talking to anybody), Beth was attempting to braid Vanna's hair with instructions from Luda while Vanna attempted making tiny braids in the front of Ilia's short hair, and Link watched them with an amused smile. Beth had wanted him to try to learn to braid as well, but he got out of it thanks to his broken arm.

Beth whined, and her fingers harshly raked through Vanna's hair, undoing both of the braids she'd been working on. "Ugh, how'd you get good at this, Luda?"

"Lots of practice," Luda said, grinning. Her grin faltered as she looked down the village. "I used to have a friend here with long hair like Vanna's."

Vanna didn't want to let the lighthearted mood get dark, so she made a joke that she might not have long hair by the end of the day if Beth knotted it much more. Though it was at her expense, even Beth herself laughed at it. Vanna told her that it wasn't entirely a joke, because she had once actually tangled her friend Maddie's hair so badly while trying to braid it that she'd had to cut a chunk out. Everyone laughed more at that, but Vanna only laughed for a few seconds before the memory made something click in her head.

It was suddenly like she was truly seeing Ilia for the first time, and she was startled by how much she looked like Maddie. The short blonde hair, the wide-set green eyes, the elfin nose, the plump top lip, the small chin... They could have passed for sisters, though Ilia was a foot shorter and all around more petite. Now that she saw the similarities, she was baffled that she hadn't noticed them before. Her only guess was that she had been too blinded by her jealousy every time she looked at Ilia, even after she'd made the conscious decision to try to stop being so jealous—emphasis on  _try_.

"Vanna...?" Ilia said. One of her hands flew up to feel her hair. "Oh, Hylia,  _please_  tell me you didn't mess up my hair that bad!"

"Huh?" Vanna said, blinking. "What? I—no, I didn't mess up your hair. I mean, it looks awful, but you don't have to cut a chunk of it out."

Ilia sighed in relief and let her hands fall back to her lap. "Then what was that look for?"

Vanna began to carefully undo the thin braids she'd put in. "It was nothing, really... I just realized you look a lot like my friend that I was talking about. It's  _crazy_  how similar you two are."

"Ah," Ilia said. "Do we act similar, too, or do we just look alike?"

Vanna chuckled. "Maddie was one of my closest girl friends before I came here, but... She annoyed me a lot." Her next sentence almost pained her to admit. "Honestly, I like you more than her."

"Well, thanks," Ilia giggled. "I'm glad I'm not annoying."

"Sure you're not," Link said, smiling devilishly.

Ilia playfully jabbed at his leg. " _You're_  the annoying one! I may not remember for myself what you used to be like, but you should've heard the things my father had to say about you when he was trying to help me remember everything. Do you remember when we were little and you used to push me into the lake?"

"Hmm..." Link rubbed his chin, pretending to think about it. "...Nah, your old man probably made that up."

"You know what?" Ilia said. She moved back, still smiling, and motioned for Link to take her spot. "Why don't you let Vanna braid your hair? You've got those nice long strands framing your face just  _begging_  to be messed up."

Just then, Vanna felt a raindrop hit her face. She was about to announce that it had started raining—Link had asked them to say if they felt any rain so he could go inside to not get his cast wet—but he must have felt a raindrop fall, too, because he stood up before she could say anything.

"Sorry, no can do; rain's starting," he said, smug. "I'll be in the sanctuary. Y'all have fun."

"I'm coming with you," Vanna said, standing up. "I don't wanna get all cold and wet."

Beth pouted and crossed her arms. "But... If you go inside, whose hair am I supposed to braid? I'm not good enough yet to braid short hair..."

Vanna knew that was only a cover up—the real reason Beth didn't want her to go inside was that she, too, had her own little crush on Link, and she always got jealous when they'd spend time together alone—but she ruffled Beth's hair and played along anyway. "My hair will still be here later for you to braid. Go play in the rain while you have the chance."

With the rain starting to come down harder, Link and Vanna half-ran to the sanctuary. Renado was inside reading a book, and he raised a hand in a silent greeting. Vanna sat down by the fire he had going to warm up, but Link opted to grab some blankets and go sit on a bench by a window.

They were comfortably quiet for a long while. Renado finished his book and went down into the cellar, and after a few minutes of them being alone in the main room, Vanna got up and went to sit by Link on the bench. While an overhang prevented rain from coming through the window, there was no glass to keep the cold out. Having just been sitting by the fire, the cold was a shock, making her shiver. Link noticed and offered her one of the blankets he had, and then he looked back out the window, forehead creased. He was watching the kids and Ilia playing and jumping around by the spring.

"You okay?" she asked.

"Just ... thinking," he said, shrugging.

"...About what?"

A corner of his lips turned down. "...Colin," he quietly said. "...And Rutela."

She slowly nodded and looked at her lap, not knowing what to say. It was nearing two months since Colin had died—and that was the first time she'd heard Link speak his name since. He also hadn't said anything about Rutela since the night he'd revealed that beasts had killed her, and in a way, she was almost more astounded that he'd brought her up than Colin. She completely understood Colin being on his mind, but he hadn't even met Rutela until she was already a ghost. She supposed Ralis' continuing depression was weighing down on him.

An image of Colin's ghost flitted through her mind. Vanna had never told a soul about that night he had appeared to her, that night he'd made her promise to stay with Link and take care of him, like he'd known how hard things would be on Link. Back then, she'd had no intentions of carrying through, believing she'd be going home soon and never seeing Link again... It was almost ironic how she'd been unthinkingly fulfilling her promise.

Link looked away from the window. "I'll ... stop wallowing."

"You don't have to feel bad for grieving, Link," she said, frowning. "You're only human."

"But he wouldn't want it." He huffed, and then his expression lightened into a small smile. "Also, I think I'm a  _li'l_  more than human."

She smiled back and rolled her eyes. "Okay, you're only a Hylian who sometimes  _isn't_  a Hylian. Is that better?"

"Much," he said, smile broadening.

It went quiet again, and he looked her over. She hoped that her cheeks didn't physically turn red when she felt the sensation of them tingling.

"I like your hair in the middle," he finally said.

It took her a second to come back to her senses and realize what he was talking about. Luda had parted her hair in the middle, saying that Beth would have an easier time giving her even double braids if she worked with the same amount of hair on either side of her head. She'd forgotten to flip it back over to its normal part on her left side. A tiny part of her considered keeping it in the middle from now on, but she acknowledged how stupid it would be to change her hair in a sad attempt to please someone.

...She'd fix it later.

"Speaking of hair," she said, "how would you feel about me trying to braid yours like Ilia suggested?"

He feigned an annoyed sigh as he scooted closer to her. "Fine... As long as I still have my sideburns by tonight."

* * *

Hanging out around Kakariko and entertaining the kids there could be fun, but it could also sometimes be a little grating and monotonous. Vanna wanted a getaway from everything, including Link—he didn't grate her nerves himself, but if she was going to be staying in Hyrule, she needed a life away from him—so she had Midna warp her out to the desert to visit Mahana.

When she'd dropped by after she and Link made it out of the Arbiter's Grounds, she'd only let Mahana know that they were both alive before she'd left in a hurry to get Link to Kakariko. Basically the first thing out of Mahana's mouth when Vanna came back to visit was a request for a rundown of what exactly had transpired in the prison after she and Kira had left. Vanna was halfway through her rundown when Kira came in, saw her on the couch, and then she had to start over from the beginning.

The hours flew by as the three of them lounged around talking. Vanna found that she tolerated Kira a lot better when Link or Zi weren't around to make her unleash her boy-craziness. Still, when Mahana offered to give her a tour of both the retreat and the town, she was okay with Kira staying back and letting the two of them go on their own.

There was one thing in particular that she was itching to see the entire time Mahana was leading her around: the Ancient Robots. She did love seeing everything the retreat had to offer, but she felt a twinge of dejection every time Mahana opened a door that didn't lead to them. She almost started to believe that she'd had a heat-induced hallucination of Mahana telling her that they had robot remains in the retreat.

"This is where we Gerudo keep the most precious items we stole during our days of being thieves," Mahana said as she brought her into a long hall. "When we renounced our ways, we did try to return some things to their rightful owners... But some items had been in our possession for so long that nobody knew who to return them to, so we kept them."

It looked like a museum, with priceless-looking artifacts sitting atop pedestals and exquisite paintings hanging on the walls. Jewels and gems glinted brightly in the firelight from the sconces, begging to be looked at, but Vanna's eyes were immediately drawn to something inelegant and rough in the back corner.

Being careful not to knock over anything on her way, she went straight to it. Dirt and rust seemed to be permanently embedded into its surface, its paint was dulled, and large pieces of it had been chipped off. If she hadn't known any better, she never would have guessed that it was supposed to be a robot.

"I knew you would come right to this little guy," Mahana said with a laugh as she came up beside her. "It doesn't look like much, but this is the best-preserved robot we have."

"Does he have a name?" Vanna asked.

"As far as I know, they never had names. They only had numbers to distinguish them."

"...You said people have tried to revive them, right?"

"Right, but no one's been able to," Mahana said. "And you said you know someone who could revive them...?"

"I know he  _could_ , if he was here and he wanted to, but..."

Before Vanna had come to Hyrule, she'd aspired to work on inventions beyond just testing them out for Mr. Rider—to build and create, maybe even do all the math and calculations that others dreaded doing. She'd thought those aspirations had become unachievable the second she'd become stuck in a world that didn't have some of the most basic technology her world had...

The existence of these robots reignited her ambitions. Maybe she couldn't ever grow up and have the domestic human life she longed for, but at least she had one dream that her circumstances couldn't take away from her.

"I don't know if I can... No, I  _will_  do it," she said. "I'll revive them myself."

"...Well, I suppose if anyone would know how to revive a robot, it would be a robot," Mahana said.

Working in a factory where robots were one of the main productions, it was only natural that Vanna overheard a lot about what went into making and repairing them, even though she had nothing to do with their production. The base of knowledge she had would have to be a good enough starting point, even with these robots being so different from the ones she was familiar with.

"I don't know how to do it, but I'll figure it out. Someday." Vanna sighed and leaned close to the robot, face-to-face. "I'll come back for you, okay?"

She reached out to tap him on his metallic nose, only to quickly draw her finger back when it shocked her.

* * *

As intimidating as the residents of Gerudo Town could look, they actually tended to be quite easy-going. Especially when they were drunk out of their minds. Vanna had been disappointed when she'd first discovered alcohol had no effect on her—not because she'd particularly  _wanted_  to get drunk, but because it was one more thing that set her apart from humanity—but her mood was brightened by the uproar of laughter from the Gerudo finding hilarity and awe in someone her size having such a high alcohol tolerance. She'd ended up spending the night there, and she'd gone back several more times over the following few weeks.

In Kakariko, Link had finally gotten his cast off, and when she was in the village with him, they'd spent a lot of time sparring with wooden swords. It helped him regain strength and get rid of the stiffness in his arm, and helped her begin to get over her aversion to using swords. Link had won every time, but she never minded. It was hard to feel anything but impressed by his swordsmanship.

It was December 1st before she knew it—she'd officially been in Hyrule for three whole months. With the help of his exercises and potions, Link's broken bones were all healed, and they'd decided to get back on the road the following morning. In preparation, they'd gotten potions, a new shield, and the hawkeye from Malo Mart, along with custom bomb arrows from Barnes' Bomb Shop that would explode on impact without requiring a fuse to be lit, all using the money Zi had given Vanna (Link's eyes looked like they could have popped out when he saw how much money there was—she felt kind of guilty because she figured that Zi had acquired it in less than lawful means). Hearing that they were going to Snowpeak, Renado had insisted they take all the warm clothes they'd need from the wardrobes of people who had once lived in Kakariko. When they'd entered a vacant house to get them, Link had said he wouldn't need warm clothes because he had a ' _built-in fur coat_ ,' but she'd made him take some anyway.

The Ordonian kids, Luda, Ilia, and Link and Vanna had gone just outside of Kakariko into Hyrule Field in the evening to spend some time together. The kids wanted to go play in the snow coating the field even farther out, but the prowling monsters out there made it too dangerous. Vanna's distaste for the cold made her secretly grateful for the monsters out there keeping them closer to the village; she wanted the last of her time away from snowy mountains to be as snow-less as possible.

Being that it was winter, the sun started to set early, and the temperature dropped with it. Link and Vanna were okay with their borrowed clothes, but the others didn't have proper clothes for the cold, so they decided to head back to the Elde Inn. In case they wouldn't see Vanna and Link again before they left, they gave them hugs and goodbyes. Malo was the only one to forego the hugs, and Ilia was the last one to hug Link before they left. She let her arms linger around him longer than the rest of them did.

Vanna waited until they were well out of earshot to start talking. "So... There's something I've been meaning to ask you for a while, but it slipped my mind every time we've been alone until now..."

Link rested back on his elbows. "What is it?"

She rested back as well. "Um... Each time I've gone back to the desert, Kira has talked about you... And I wanted to ask..." She gulped and looked at the sunset instead of him. "How did you feel about her kissing you?"

He was quiet for a moment, and then he chuckled. "Well, I wasn't  _upset_  about it." He sighed. "You probably wouldn't get it, but when you're from a tiny village like I am, it's like your life is laid out for you. You don't get much of a choice when there's not much to choose from. It was ... nice, to learn that I have options."

That reminded her of the argument they'd had around the time they went to the Goron Mines—it already felt so long ago, now—about destiny. He had said he couldn't simply go home even if he wanted to, because a Light Spirit had relayed to him that it was his destiny as the Hero Chosen by the Goddesses to save Hyrule. She had rudely disagreed, saying that there was no such thing as Light Spirits or Goddesses or even destiny. She believed in Light Spirits now that she had seen one with her own eyes; she even believed in Goddesses, to the dismay of her bygone vehemently atheistic self, now that she knew spirits and souls and the afterlife existed; but she still couldn't make herself believe that  _destiny_  was real.

So, she was surprised to hear that Link also didn't seem to believe his entire life was ruled by destiny when she'd assumed otherwise. He fully recognized that he had options in life, even if only in the romance department.

"...I'm sorry," she said.

"For what?"

Vanna sighed and lay back completely, folding her arms behind her head. "For making so many assumptions and being rude to you about them before. When I first got here, I was just ...  _angry_ , and scared, and so confused by this world, but none of those things are excuses. I shouldn't have taken anything out on you. And I'm sorry for not apologizing earlier."

She closed her eyes as she waited for him to respond, beginning to think that she should have let the past stay in the past.

"I forgive you," he said. "But I never stayed mad at you. I knew you were only snappy 'cause you were overwhelmed and homesick."

He was looking down at her with a slight smile when she opened her eyes back up. "You... You really weren't mad?" she asked.

"Not after a while. I understood what you were going through," he said, lying back like her. "So, did Kira ask you to ask me how I felt about her kissing me...?"

Vanna considered lying because the truth would be a bit embarrassing to admit, but she admitted it anyway. "No, I was just curious."

He said nothing for a few seconds. "...I'm curious, too. Have you ever ... kissed someone?"

Her heart sped up, though she tried her best to keep her wishful thinking to a minimum. "Yeah. I'd been in two relationships before coming here. I guess that might seem like a lot to you, since you're from a village with three teenagers  _total_ , but that's not really a lot of relationships where I come from. Most people at my school would have a new boyfriend or girlfriend practically every other week."

Link hummed. "Why did your relationships end?"

"My mom," she grumbled. "When I was dating someone, we were only ever allowed to hang out together at my house while my mom was home. The first person I ever dated, Camrin, just ... got tired of never getting to really be alone with me. And then the second one, Renzo... His parents were really overprotective too, so when he moved away, we both decided to break up because we knew we'd never get to see each other."

She wondered if they would ever find out that they had unknowingly dated a robot. Imagining their reactions would have made her laugh if being reminded of why they broke up hadn't made her sad. She remembered being so resentful of her mom for ruining her relationships—and now Daina was no longer around her to do so, and instead Vanna had to deal with the mere fact of her not being a human snuffing out any opportunities she might have otherwise had. She'd gone from one hindrance to another.

"...Do you miss them that much?" Link asked.

"No. I haven't even thought about either of them in months." About three months.

Vanna turned her head to him when he didn't respond, and she saw that he had already been looking at her. He must have seen on her face that she was upset and come to the wrong conclusion.

For the first time, she was hit with an overwhelming urge to just  _tell him_. She wanted to tell him that this past month and a half with him had cemented everything she felt for him. She wanted to tell him how she'd never felt as strongly for anyone else before, not even Camrin or Renzo; how safe he made her feel; how warm his smile made her; how her heart raced when he reached out for her; how  _good_  it was to have someone who accepted her for who she was unconditionally.

But they were leaving together in the morning, and she knew now was not the time to make things awkward.

"It's getting dark," she said abruptly, sitting up. "We should probably go inside, now."

"Actually, I wanted to go to the hot spring. One last chance to be warm before we hit the snow." He hopped to his feet and held a hand out to her. "Wanna come with?"

She put her hand in his and stood up, a smile already forming on her face when she agreed. As they started walking back to the village, her heart was very aware that he didn't let go of her hand.


	34. Family

Link and Vanna had decided on taking two stops before heading for Snowpeak, the first of which brought them to a place that was the antithesis of their ultimate destination: the desert. In their haste to save the Gerudo girls from the Bulblin encampment, they had skipped up the Hero's Shade who was waiting there. Link wanted to learn another sword skill from the Shade before setting off to find the mirror shards, and as per her usual, Vanna wanted to learn more about everything spiritual from him.

In the morning, they tracked him down and found him hidden in an alcove along the path to the Arbiter's Grounds. As he had done before, he split into two separate forms and lunged at each of them. The scenery before Vanna faded from desert to snow, and the Hero's Shade transformed into his undead self.

"It's good to see you again," she said.

He nodded. "I notice that you are now carrying both bow and sword on you. Have you returned to sword training?"

"Yeah. I've been training with Link a lot over the past few weeks, so, uh, I'm not really interested in doing more training with you today." More getting her ass kicked, really. "I kinda just wanna talk to you, if that's all right?"

"By that, I assume you mean you would like to ask me questions."

"Yup."

"You may ask what you want, but know there are questions I either will not or can not answer."

"I figured that after you basically kicked me out so you wouldn't have to explain what you meant about regrets last time," she said. She plopped herself on the ground, satisfied that the snow in her subconscious wasn't cold. "...So. My mom said she thinks I have someone else's spirit, and for a while I thought it was just some crazy quasi-religious belief... But now that I know souls do go from person to person, I'm wondering if there's a chance she was right, but she just used the wrong terminology because most people in my world don't think there's a difference between soul and spirit."

He sat down across from her. "You very well may have inherited someone else's soul, but there is also a chance you are a new soul."

She waited for him to say more, but he didn't. "...I was hoping you could see if she was right since you were able to see that I have a soul and no spirit..."

"I am sorry to disappoint you, but my being a spirit does not mean I am omniscient of all spiritual matters. All I know of your soul is that it exists. Only you can tell if your soul has lived before. Often, people will regain memories from past lives in dreams..."

"...But I don't dream," she said.

"That is fine; dreams are not the only avenue of regaining memories from past lives. When your path mirrors the path of a past life, you may find you have a faint memory of experiencing the same thing before."

She couldn't remember anything like that ever happening. "The girl my mom thinks I'm reincarnated from died as a young child, so if she's right, could that explain why I've never remembered anything from her life? Because she was so young, and I haven't experienced anything mirroring what her life was like...?"

"Perhaps. However, you could also be a new soul as I previously suggested, or simply a young one. New souls have no past lives to remember, and young souls with minimal past lives do not recall them as often as those who have had many past lives."

Vanna sighed, contemplating what to ask him next since this was going nowhere. If he couldn't answer questions about her, then maybe he'd be open to answering things she'd been wondering about him that hopefully weren't too personal for his tastes. "...Why do you look all decayed? I saw the spirit of a little boy, and he looked the same as he did when he was alive, just more see-through and blue and glowy. Is it because you've been dead for a long time?"

"No, though I have been dead for a very long time. Spirits can appear however we wish, hence the golden wolf form I take on despite never having been such a thing in life. It is a personal choice of mine to project myself as I do. If I were to retain the appearance I had in life ... Link would have many questions. He does not need to know who I am for now. My goal is to teach him."

"Why would Link have questions if he saw what you looked like? Would  _I_  have questions?"

"You always have questions." Well, that was the first time she'd ever heard him make a joke.

He wasn't wrong, though. "But would I?"

"No, you would not, because I already told you who I am. You would not be surprised to see how similar Link looks to me."

"You seriously haven't told him you're his ancestor?" she asked, brows raised.

"No, and it would be much appreciated if you would allow me to be the one to tell him one day."

She smiled. "Okay, I'll keep your secret.  _I_ _f_ , you show me what you looked like. I'll be the judge of how much Link took after you."

"...Not today."

"Fine, then..." she mumbled. "But if you won't let me see your real face, will you at least tell me your real name? ' _T_ _he Hero's Shade_ ' can't be what you're really called."

"I will someday." He stood in a swift movement. "Link has learned his new skill quickly. We are nearly finished."

Vanna groaned. "Why do you have to keep kicking me out right when I ask you something just the  _tiniest_  bit personal? It's not fair. You already know so much about me, but you won't even tell me your name."

He ignored that. "Continue to train until we meet again. Next time, I would like you to show me all that you have learned. Goodbye."

Her vision faded away, and she was back in the desert next to Link and Midna when it returned. The golden wolf was gone.

With nothing left to do there, Midna warped them close to Castle Town. Link wanted to go to the group at Telma's bar and look over Snowpeak on their map. He'd said there were some twilight portals to the north that were close by it, but he thought it best to get a lay of the land so they wouldn't end up aimlessly wandering in the cold snow. As someone who liked neither the cold nor the snow, Vanna had no objections to that.

It was still fairly early in the morning, so not many people were in the streets. The lack of people made it easier for Vanna to notice certain things she hadn't seen in the bustle from before, namely the signs of some businesses. One, in particular, caught her eye— _the Fortune-Telling Mansion, Fanadi's Palace_. She recalled Mahana telling Zi to see if the fortuneteller in Castle Town would mentor him, and she supposed this was her.

Thinking of Zi made her slow her pace. He and his father hadn't come to Kakariko over the month and a half she was there, but they both still had to be out there  _somewhere_  looking for her. She was bound to run into them sooner or later... And she knew she would feel a lot better if she knew when to expect it. A fortuneteller could give her a heads-up.

She stopped when they got in front of the door and tapped Link on the arm to get his attention. "Hey, I wanna go in here real quick. You can go ahead to the bar. I'll meet you there, or you can meet me outside here if you get done in there first."

Link gave her a questioning look that told her he'd want an explanation later, but he agreed to her plan and went off toward the bar without her.

Vanna raised her fist to knock on the door, but a voice from inside told her to enter before she got to. Startled, she looked over the door and around it for some sort of peephole that Fanadi could have used to see her. There was nothing as far as she could tell, not even a window. She warily pushed the door open enough to peek inside.

It was ominous, to say the least. Dark, ornate drapes hung over the walls, and the only source of light was the glowing crystal ball on a small round table. The overweight, scantily clad woman sitting behind it had piercing red eyes and a small grin on her piggish face. Her jewelry jingled as she raised a hand to beckon Vanna in.

" _I've_  been  _waiting_  for  _you_ ," the woman said, low voice dragging out and emphasizing every other word.

' _What a fortuneteller-like thing to say_ ,' was what Vanna would have responded had she not been speechless.

She slowly stepped inside. The air suddenly felt heavy as she closed the door behind her.

"Come  _closer_ ," Fanadi said, and Vanna did. "Only  _I_  can tell what the  _fates_  have  _in store_  for you... For ten Rupees."

Mahana had said she was a ' _competent_ ' fortuneteller, but Vanna was hesitant to believe that. Though she knew magic and the supernatural were real in Hyrule, the existence of those things didn't automatically give Fanadi any credibility. Every world probably had con artists.

"Before I pay you," she said, "I want you to prove to me that you're the real deal. What's my name?"

Fanadi shook her head. " _That_  is not how this  _works_... My magic ball does not  _speak_  to me; it  _shows_  me scenes from the  _future_."

Vanna crossed her arms. "Okay, then... Can it  _show_  you something that would prove I can trust you?"

She hummed and hovered her hands over the crystal ball, and it glowed brighter. "I  _see_... Yes, you should  _trust_  me when I tell you I see  _him_.  _Thin_  as a twig... He's  _tall_ —yes,  _very_  tall, this dark-haired  _boy_  you know..."

Those descriptors were enough to get the image through to her and make her tense up. Maybe he really had talked to Fanadi as Mahana had suggested, and he had told her of Vanna... Or maybe she had seen him around town, but what were the chances that Fanadi could have guessed he was in any way connected to her?

" _I_  do not  _know_  this boy," Fanadi went on as if she'd read her mind, "but I can  _see_  that your  _fates_  are heavily  _entwined_. For ten Rupees, you can hear  _how_..."

Even if it turned out to be a con, she could afford to lose a meager ten Rupees. She grabbed a yellow Rupee from the money bag Zi had given to her and placed it on her table. Fanadi smiled and hummed.

"I  _see_...  _You_ , fearful. But this  _boy_... He is  _purer_  than he seems."

What little trust Vanna had in the woman started to chip away at that. Last time she checked, being an accessory to a planned murder was far from  _pure_.

"Hesitant.  _Heartbroken_. He does  _not_  want  _this_..."

Vanna frowned. Why was she trying to make  _her_  pity  _him_? As much as she hated it, she couldn't deny that it was working...

Fanadi gasped, and her eyes widened. The light from her crystal ball dimmed, leaving only her face and hands illuminated and sending the rest of the room into darkness. " _They_  are coming. Son  _and_  father.  _Soon_."

Her heart started to race. She leaned in closer to Fanadi and looked into her ball, but she saw nothing. "What?  _When?_  What's going to happen?"

" _Death_  is on the  _table_... But the  _answer_  is  _with_  you." Fanadi slowly lifted her head, and as her wide, horrified eyes bore into hers, she whispered, " _Fly away_."

Vanna had never run as fast as she did to get out of there.

* * *

"What  _was_  that?" Link asked as they exited Castle Town.

He was referring to Vanna bursting into the bar, ' _looking like she'_ _d_ _seen a ghost_ ' in Telma's words. She had insisted it was nothing, but she hadn't fooled anyone.

"The fortuneteller told me that Zi and Mr. Rider are coming for me," she said.

"...That's it?" he said. "We both already knew that."

"But she said it was happening  _soon_. And she made it seem like—like..." She gulped. "Like I'm going to die if I don't do something right. But I don't know  _what_  I have to do right."

Link stopped walking and looked at her, brows pulled together. "What did she say? Word for word."

"' _Death is on the table, but the answer is with you_.' And then she told me to fly away, and I ran out."

"' _Death is on the table'_?" Link repeated. "As in, your death can be discussed? You can talk them out of it?"

"I don't know, maybe? But then what would ' _the answer is with you_ ' mean?  _What_  answer? Something specific I have to say?" she said.

Midna came up out of her shadow. " _Guys_. There's no reason to analyze some vague mumbo jumbo like that. Whatever scenario that lady was seeing— _if_  she was really seeing one at all—will never happen. I can warp us all away the second I see Zi or his dad."

"You don't see anything from the shadows, and you stay in them most of the time," Vanna said.

She rolled her eyes. "Then just yell for me to warp you if you see them. No need for more angst." The finality in her voice told Vanna there was no point in discussing the situation with her any further. Midna turned her attention to Link. "So, I only heard what little was said after Vanna made it to the bar. Did you find out anything helpful?"

"Ashei is in Snowpeak visiting her hometown, and we can talk to her and see if she's heard anything about the mirror shard. There's a long tunnel carved through the cliffs around Zora's Domain that should lead us right to it, so we don't have to go climb and hike over Snowpeak's mountains to get there."

"And there's already a twilight portal in Zora's Domain, so we can be there in no time. Shall we?" Midna said.

"Actually, I think we ought to use the portal in Upper Zora's River," Link said. "We'd have to walk some to get to the domain, but I think that'd be better than warping directly into the water in the throne room. We don't need to be all wet when we're headed for the cold."

"Hmm, I guess you have a point. And it'd probably scare the Zoras in there if a wolf and a girl suddenly splashed into their pool... Okay. Let's go."

Midna warped them as soon as Link's transformation into his wolf form was complete. Before her vision even returned, Vanna could tell they were closer to Snowpeak by the sudden drop in temperature. She deflated when she saw that they were already in a snow-covered valley. She'd been hoping they wouldn't come across any until getting out on the other side of the tunnel in Snowpeak itself, but she supposed she should have expected snow to be just about anywhere considering it was December.

Nestled against one of the valley walls above the river was a shack, and a woman was sitting on its porch with her head turned away from them. Midna noticed her as well, and she hurried to take the shadow crystal out of Link and dip into her shadow before she could look their way.

"Zora's Domain is through there," Link said, indicating to a wide and dark cavern.

Hearing Link's voice, the woman's head turned. Vanna narrowed her eyes to get a better look at her, but she didn't have to for long because she got up and started jogging to them. When she got close enough that she could clearly see her face, Vanna's eyes widened.

She looked remarkably similar to Vanna's oldest half-sister's fiancée Ami. Were she not the third person she'd come across in Hyrule who closely resembled someone she knew from America, she might not have thought much of them looking alike, but it was getting weird. First it was Shad that looked like her friend Bax, then she'd realized that Ilia looked like her friend Maddie, and now there was this woman.

"Hey! Er, sorry to bother you. My name's Iza. I used to rent boats for rides down the river, but the river was dammed up by a rockfall. It's hard enough to run my business in these months as is, and now I can't at all. I've been looking for a handy guy to help out... Do you know somebody who could?" She couldn't have made it more clear that she was really asking if  _Link_  would; she didn't look at Vanna while speaking.

"Well, we're kinda busy now, but maybe she can someday," Link said, pointing at Vanna. "She could break up the rocks with bomb arrows."

"Oh... Okay. Sure, if she'd want to," Iza said with a forced smile.

"I'll see about coming back soon," Vanna said.

"You're a lifesaver!" she said to Link. Vanna huffed— _she_  was the one going to deal with her problem, not him. "Be sure to stop on by with her when she comes. I'll be waiting!"

Iza waved—again, only to Link—before turning and going back to her shop. Vanna scrunched up her nose at her, and then she and Link started walking toward Zora's Domain.

"...Do you think she wanted me to help her out instead?" he muttered sarcastically.

"Don't know where you got that impression," she said with a sigh. "I'm surprised she's interested in you, but I guess I shouldn't be."

"What makes you say that?" he asked.

"Remember me telling you about my family?" she asked. He nodded. "Seriously, if her hair was smaller, her eyes were darker, and her nose was wider, she'd basically look  _just_  like Ami."

He raised an eyebrow and glanced back. "Ami's engaged to your sister Kalina, right?"

"Yeah. So, she can't really be  _that_  similar to Ami if she likes you... It's just really strange seeing someone who looks so much like her acting a way that she never would." She paused for a moment. "I know you know about Ilia looking like Maddie... But I don't think I ever told you about Shad looking like another one of my friends. It seems like every place in Hyrule has at least one person that matches up with someone from my world."

"Even Death Mountain?" he joked.

She smiled. " _Except_  there, and the Gerudo Desert. And I haven't been to Zora's Domain yet, but from what I've seen of the Zoras, I'm confident that no Zora looks like anyone from America, either."

"It could just be a coincidence that some humans here look like humans from there. There are really only so many ways a human face can look."

"Maybe..."

They were silent for the rest of their walk. Nearing the brightened end of the cavern, they were greeted by the sound of waterfalls. Walking into the domain, Vanna's first thought was that it was simultaneously more grand and more simplistic than she had imagined. Murals were carved into the high cliff faces, and multiple waterfalls gushed from above them down into the basin of pure water. While the carvings and the waterfalls were beautiful, especially the largest waterfall at the end, there wasn't too much else to look at at first. Still, the sight was a treat after having gotten so used to the smaller, derelict, arid Kakariko.

The surrounding cliffs hugged in, forcing them to walk closer to where the water encroached the land. Looking into its depths, Vanna realized that the basin had to hold more of the domain than the above-ground portion did. Zoras were swimming in and out of numerous holes along its sides. If she had nothing else to do—and if the water weren't cold, as she knew it had to be—she'd have liked to have swum into them to see what all was down there.

Some Zoras standing around eyed them as they passed them by, but none of them said anything until they got to the tunnel. A nearby Zora asked them if they knew where they were going as they recognized that Link and Vanna weren't people who regularly used the shortcut to and from Tabantha Village, and then warned them that Snowpeak was currently even colder than usual. After they entered the tunnel, the Zora called out one final warning: " _Don't freeze to death!_ "

For a while, the tunnel was actually slightly warmer than it had been in the domain because of the lack of wind, but it gradually became colder. About ten minutes into walking, there was still no end in sight, and they stopped to layer up.

Another ten minutes passed before Vanna knew they were almost at the end. The temperature had dropped impossibly further, there were icicles hanging from the roof, and a distant white light appeared that made the glow of her necklace begin to dim. Frigid air carrying snow flurries blew in, and she pulled her hat down her forehead and tried to hide the lower half of her face under the scarf she had on.

It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust to the whiteness as they stepped out of the tunnel, and everything was still mostly white after they did. Two people with brown faces and colorful clothes were the only things to break the otherwise monochromatic scenery, but even they were hard to make out because of the shroud of falling snow. They were down a slope and across a cracked frozen lake, standing still on a flat plane amid surrounding cliffs.

"H- _how_  are they just  _standing_  there in this weather?!" she said, voice muffled from her scarf.

"Probably used to it if they live here." When his sentence was out in a puff of white air, Link could no longer keep his teeth from chattering. "A-and they can probably help us find Ashei..."

Tucking her gloved hands between her arms and her sides, she went with him down the slope. They stopped at the edge of the frozen lake. There was no way around it with the tall cliffs to the right and left of it; they'd have to go from sheet to sheet of ice atop it to get to the other side, being careful to not misstep and fall into the water.

A man's voice yelled over, but with the wind and her ears being covered by her hat, Vanna couldn't hear the words he said.

"You wanna go first?" Link asked.

"W-what?" she said.

"He said we should go one at a t-time so we don't tip or break the ice. I think you should go first since you weigh less, but I-I'll go first if you want me to."

"N-no, I'll go."

Vanna took a moment to build up some courage, and then she slowly placed one foot over to the first sheet of ice. It felt sturdy enough, so she brought her other foot over. She was exceedingly cautious as she stepped from sheet to sheet, always testing her weight before crossing and sometimes backing out and choosing to step to a different piece. As she got closer to the people, she could make them out more—they were both young men, potentially related, and they had rods out and were fishing through the gaps in the frozen lake. The lake wasn't very wide, but it took several minutes for her to make it over to them.

One of the men, slightly taller than the other and with long black hair hanging out of the front of his fuzzy hood, spoke to her. "Hello, there. You got business here?"

"We c-came to see Ashei," she said.

The other man looked over, curiosity in his dark eyes. "You know Ashei?"

"She's our cousin," the long-haired man said.

"Really?" she asked. She never would have guessed they were related to Ashei; all they had in common were their black hair and brown eyes.

"Our mom's brother's kid, yeah. Believe it or not, our mom is pale," he said with a smile. She didn't know how he could stand having his face uncovered. "I'm Jeen, and this is Kell."

"I'm Vanna, and this is Link," she said as Link hopped off the final sheet of ice on the lake to join her.

Jeen started to reel in his line. "You're Link, eh? Ashei's talked about you some. I'll take you two to her." Finished reeling in the line, he planted the end of his fishing rod deep in the snow, and it stayed upright when he let go of it. "Be back soon, Kell."

He turned around and took off, and Link and Vanna followed behind him. After rounding the cliff that bordered the left of the lake, a series of log cabins came into view. Like the shacks in Kakariko, nearly all of the windows were boarded up, and a few of the roofs looked crudely patched. One cabin was missing a roof entirely.

In front of one of the cabins, Jeen stopped to turn to them, and he spoke quietly. "Ashei should be in here, along with our grandparents, my mother, and my daughter. Don't be surprised if my mother and grandparents are cranky. They always are to begin with, but things haven't been going well in our village lately. The blizzard that's been hitting the province has been devastating, and we've also had a beast ransacking our kitchens in the middle of the night. It'd ... be best to avoid either of those topics."

After using his feet to push away some of the snow that had piled inches high up the door, he opened the door and walked in. Vanna went in next, and then Link stepped in and shut the door behind him. It was colder inside than any house had a right to be, yet it was still much warmer than the bitter outdoors. She pulled her scarf down from her face, but she decided to keep all her other layers where they were for now.

Her eyes were drawn first to a fireplace that she wanted to go warm up by, then to Ashei who was leaned against the wall next to it. A little black-haired brown-skinned girl was sitting by the fireplace and drawing on a piece of paper, and an old man and woman, each with light skin and gray-white hair, were sitting on a couch by the girl. Across from them was someone else with graying black hair, who she presumed to be Kell and Jeen's mother, sitting in a rocking chair that faced away from them.

"You've got visitors, Ashei," Jeen announced.

Everyone except the woman in the rocking chair looked their way. Ashei started walking over to them, and the little girl abandoned her drawing to run to Jeen.

"Daddy!" she said, jumping into his arms. "Are you and Uncle Kell all done ice fishing?"

"No, not yet. I only came to let Ashei's visitors in. I have to go back," Jeen said. The little girl pouted and whined. "We'll come back home when we get enough fish to feed all of us for today, all right, Bree?"

She nodded, still pouting, and Jeen put her back on the floor. He gave them a short wave before stepping around them and leaving, letting in a blast of chilled air that made Vanna shiver. Bree ran back to the fireplace as Ashei came to a stop in front of them.

"What are you two doing here?" Ashei asked. "Did Telma send you?"

"No, but she did tell us we could find you here. We came to talk to you," Link said.

"Who comes to a place like this just to  _talk_  to someone?" the old lady grumbled.

Ashei looked back at her. "This is Link, the guy I was talking about. He could probably help us." The old lady humphed, and Ashei sat down at a table and gestured to the seats across from her. "What did you come to talk about?"

"Remember that mirror I asked about last time we were at the bar?" Vanna said as she and Link sat down.

"The one Shad said might be somewhere in the desert, yeah? Did you find it?" Ashei asked.

"We found part of it," Link said.

"It was broken, and three shards of it are hidden around Hyrule," Vanna said. "We heard that one shard is somewhere in Snowpeak. Have you seen it?"

Ashei breathed out an unamused laugh. "You can hardly see  _anything_  in this blizzard. No." She crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair. "But I haven't been outside much... You see, I've been staying inside to try to catch a beast that's been breaking into houses in this village and stealing dairy and fruit."

"Dairy and fruit that we pay a good price to get all the way out here."

Vanna surmised that the person who had spoken up had to be Kell and Jeen's mother—she and the old man were the only people she hadn't heard talk yet, and it was clearly a woman speaking—but that didn't stop her heart from reacting to the fact that she sounded exactly like her mom.

Then, when she stood up from her rocking chair and turned to face them, Vanna's heart somehow managed to beat even faster, fluttering like a hummingbird's wings in her chest. That  _was_  her mom.

She walked over and sat down next to Ashei while Vanna sat frozen in her seat, mind racing yet unable to form any logical thoughts.

"Ashei says you're a helper, yeah?" she said to Link. "Think you can help us track down that rotten thief?"

"We can try. If the beast's a thief, it might've also stolen what we're lookin' for," Link said.

She looked at Vanna and curled her lip. "This little dolt is your assistant?"

Vanna flinched out of her daze.

"She's not my ' _assistant_ ,' she's my friend. You want our help, don't you?" Link said.

"Dolt?" Vanna quietly repeated, frowning.

There was no recognition on her face as they locked eyes, only contempt. "You've been sitting there staring at me with a stupid look on your face," she sneered.

Underneath her strict parenting, Vanna's mom was a good-natured woman. Her actions, as angry as many of them had made Vanna, had always come from a place of love, and her intentions were never malicious.  _Never_ , in a million years, would Daina have spoken to her or looked at her like that.

This woman's callousness made Vanna realize that she was merely another doppelganger, but she was still stunned by her appearance even knowing that was all she was. The other doppelgangers had their differences, and this woman looked  _exactly_  like her mom. The only visual giveaway that they weren't the same person was her clothes that she knew her mom didn't own, but it wasn't like her mom couldn't have borrowed clothes from Hyrule as she had done. Everything else about them was identical; the way their hair parted in the middle and ended bluntly an inch above their shoulders, the little wrinkles between their eyebrows, their thin lips, their narrow eyes the same shade of hazel as hers...

And she had two sons, Kell and Jeen. Like Vanna's sisters, Kalina and Jaylene. Ignoring the obvious differences in sex and race, there were some physical similarities between Kell and Kalina, and Jeen and Jaylene. Jeen even had a daughter named Bree, like how Jaylene had a son named Gabriel. Bree was a few years older than Gabriel, but it was easy to imagine that they would someday look similar, too.

In the span of an hour, she had run into the Hyrulean version of practically every person in her family. Just a couple of things seemed wrong. For one, this woman's parents looked absolutely nothing like her mom's parents, though Vanna supposed that she along with Kell and Jeen proved there was a spectrum of how similar or dissimilar Hyrulean versions could be. For two, she didn't have a cousin that matched up with Ashei; she didn't have a cousin,  _period_. Both of her parents were only children. For three, Iza and Kell apparently weren't together like Ami and Kalina.

The only people missing from the picture were her dad and Vanna, but she guessed they could have been dead here like they were at home.

"Seriously, Daina, these two might be our only help, yeah?" Ashei said. The woman even had the same  _name_  as her mom.

"I'm sorry for staring,  _Daina_ ," Vanna said, having trouble getting her name out. "I was just wondering—um, are Kell and Jeen your only kids?"

" _I'm_  the rude one for not liking some girl staring me down like a dope, eh?" Daina said, glaring at her. "Don't you think it's a bit rude to enter the house of someone you don't know and start demanding to be given information about their family?"

" _Ye_ _ah_ , Kell and Jeen are her only children," Ashei answered. "Their father left when they were young, and she's been bitter since."

Daina clicked her tongue and directed her glare toward Ashei.

It seemed it wasn't necessarily that the Hyrulean versions of her dad and Vanna had died here—they were never a part of this family in the first place. Vanna wondered, since families clearly didn't always match up all the way, if the Hyrulean Vanna was out there somewhere with a different mother.

"Anyway," Ashei said slowly. "I caught a glimpse of the beast one night, yeah? Apparently, the Zoras have been catching glimpses of it in their domain, too. Each time someone here has spotted it, it's been holding a type of red fish that don't live in the lake here, so it must be stealing them from Zora's Domain. I want to investigate further, but it's not safe to try to follow the beast in this blizzard..."

"I'm sure we could track it down," Link said.

"Hold on," Ashei said. She pushed herself away from the table, walked to a desk, and came back with a piece of paper. "This is what the beast looks like."

She sat the paper on the table and pushed it over to them. The drawing on it showcased a large creature holding a red fish in one hand and a pumpkin in the other. It looked like it could have been drawn by the little girl.

"...Look, I'm not an artist, yeah?" Ashei said.

"This is good enough," Link said, grabbing the paper. "So, the beast always gets this type of fish from the domain?"

"Always that red fish. It never steals any of the fish from here, just dairy and fruit. Maybe you can talk to the Zoras and see if they have any idea why it'd want it. Knowing why it's stealing might put us a step closer to stopping it, yeah?"

"Couldn't it just ... I don't know ... want food?" Vanna said.

Daina scoffed. "It's been living in Snowpeak for years, and only in the last month or so has it started stealing food. You think it survived just fine on its own for years and all of a sudden it needs to start stealing now?"

Vanna would have been snappy right back to her if she were anyone else, but as it were, Daina's rudeness only upset her. It hurt to hear her mom's voice speak like that to her, though she knew she wasn't actually her mom.

"All right, we're leaving," Link said abruptly, standing up and stashing the drawing away. Vanna stood up as well, grateful he was getting them out. "Thanks for the help, Ashei. We'll let you know what we find."

"I'll be heading back to Castle Town soon, so you can come find me in the bar, yeah?" she said.

"Yeah. See you."

Link placed his hand on the small of Vanna's back and took a step toward the door. She returned the glare Daina was giving her and left without a word.


End file.
